Lord Lamont of Lerwick: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What representations they are making to the government of Iraq about the position of women and Christians in Iraq since the coalition invasion of 2003.

Lord Triesman: My Lords, in the training missions which we operate with the police forces being recruited—we, of course, are principally concerned with recruitment in the south of the country—we make every provision to ensure that there is anti-discriminatory training. It may well take some time for those lessons to take root. There has been a particular effort, however, to recruit women into the police force, including specialist women and those who can deal with the juvenile detention unit in Basra. I chart not success or complacency, but the beginning of a long process in which those ingredients must be focal.

Lord Dearing: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that answer. In the light of his recognition of the value of these overseas students—to the British economy, to higher education and to our people—can he say whether the Government have firm plans to launch a second instalment of the Prime Minister's 1999 initiative to increase the number of overseas students? Can he, in that context, assure the House that it will be an integrated government policy in which the British Council is properly funded to discharge its responsibilities?

Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes: My Lords, the Minister mentioned the sum of £3 billion that was being brought in by overseas students. Can he give the cost of educating these students?

Lord Adonis: My Lords, the noble Baroness may give the Foreign Office ideas about the kind of fees that it could ask for in due course. The cost analysis that has been done is robust. Indeed, we reduced the cost of the fees for leave to remain, because of concerns in the University sector, to £250 for the postal application service. We believe that those fees are justified. However, we have given an undertaking that any further changes in the fees will be subject to full consultation with the sector. That is the reason why we set up the joint education task force, on which the Home Office is represented. Indeed, my honourable friend the Minister for Immigration had a highly productive meeting with the task force last month.

Lord Quirk: My Lords, given the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, how concerned are Her Majesty's Government about our apparent loss in market share in the recruitment of overseas students, that seven OECD countries are recruiting such students more rapidly than we are, and that, even in Europe, France and Germany now have almost as many such students as we have, which would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Apart from his welcome response to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, what does the Government propose to do so as to restart the impetus that we had in this country?

Lord Warner: My Lords, the Department of Health consulted widely on these proposals. The response to that consultation raised a range of complex and sensitive issues, which ministers are carefully considering before deciding the way forward. We intend to publish the results of the consultation when we indicate the way forward.

Baroness Boothroyd: My Lords, I appreciate the complexity of this issue and am grateful for the Minister's response, although I fear he said little more than most of us already know. This consultation has taken a long time, and the consultation process came to an end in August 2004. Would it not be more direct and simpler to insist on insurance cover for healthcare from overseas visitors coming from a country where we do not have reciprocal health agreements? Only last week I renewed my health insurance, which is a requirement when making overseas visits outside the EU. Why is it not possible for this country to adopt a similar approach so as to reduce the cost of health tourism on the National Health Service?

Lord Warner: My Lords, the noble Baroness has correctly identified one of the complexities in this particular area, and I share her concerns over those complexities. That is why Ministers are not rushing to make changes and are considering these complex issues very carefully.

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, world leaders agreed in September that states have primary responsibility for the protection of their own populations. Invoking the responsibility to protect requires the support of the Security Council. Clearly it is not a matter for the EU alone.
	In respect of food distribution, food shortages are rife but mass starvation is currently unlikely. The UN has, through the World Food Programme, secured agreement from the government of Zimbabwe to distribute 300,000 tonnes of food to approximately 3 million people.

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, in respect of the noble Baroness's final point, DfID works through the UN and through NGOs. I can assure the noble Baroness that the money is used properly and is properly accounted for. With respect to Operation Murambatsvina and the position first taken by the government of Zimbabwe when they said that the UN would not be allowed to distribute humanitarian aid in the form of tents, and so on, I am pleased to report that that Government have now written to the UN saying that they are prepared to accept humanitarian support from it. I like to think that that is because of international pressure. Immediately following that Government's refusal, the UN Secretary-General put out a very strong statement, which was supported by the EU, the UK presidency of the EU and many others. I like to think that that changed the heart of the government of Zimbabwe.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, has the noble Baroness made any representations to the Food and Agriculture Organisation about the bizarre spectacle of Mr Mugabe haranguing the recent anniversary meeting when he was responsible for what the FAO described as an acute crisis in which 5 million people needed food aid? Even if they were obliged to admit Mr Mugabe under the rubric that requires UN agencies to allow ministers to attend their meetings, why did the Italians granted a visa to Mrs Grace Mugabe. Cannot representations be made to the Italian authorities about that?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
	No one can doubt the threat to our society posed by terrorism, particularly international terrorism. The list of terrorist atrocities around the world is long and many of the names are all too familiar: New York, Nairobi, Sharm el-Sheikh, Bali—tragically twice—Madrid and even in the period since the Bill was introduced in another place, there have been attacks in Amman and Karachi.
	Many of these attacks took place prior to the military action in Iraq and have continued since without abatement. This summer London was added to the list of places which have been attacked. I do not propose to dwell on the attacks of July because all of your Lordships will be familiar with those terrible events and because there are still ongoing investigations and prosecutions.
	Those attacks demonstrated that the threat we face is real and deadly. We cannot afford any complacency in our response. We must ensure that our anti-terrorism legislation is as comprehensive and up-to-date as possible. The international nature of terrorism means we must look internationally in our response and I am pleased to say that one of the important purposes of this Bill is to enable the United Kingdom to ratify two important international conventions.
	Perhaps I could begin by outlining the way in which the Government have approached this matter. We have said all along that in a matter as important as this we want to proceed by consensus. As I am sure your Lordships will have seen from the reports of proceedings in the other place, there has not been a complete meeting of minds. Nevertheless, it is important that we do not let the fact that there are still some areas of disagreement overshadow the fact that much of the Bill commands cross-party support.
	I am gratified that the Bill received an unopposed Third Reading in another place and I pay tribute to the opposition parties for their willingness to engage constructively. I am sure that there are points which we will debate vigorously in your Lordships' House but I hope we can continue to work in a spirit of consensus.
	It might be helpful if I were briefly to say something about the history of the Bill. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary made a commitment to bring forward further counter-terrorism legislation earlier this year during the passage of the Bill which became the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005.
	Preparations for the Bill were already well under way in early July of this year, and on 15 July my right honourable friend sent out to the opposition spokesmen a list of measures that we proposed to include in the Bill. I am grateful to them for the positive response they were able to give. We also made it clear that we were consulting the police and intelligence agencies in the light of the attacks and would consider whether additional measures were required.
	My right honourable friend agreed with the principal opposition spokesmen at that time that we would dispense with formal pre-legislative scrutiny but that nevertheless, in the time available, we would engage in as much consultation as possible. Accordingly, we sent out the draft Bill to the opposition and relevant parliamentary committee chairs on 15 September. In the light of the helpful comments we received, we wrote again on 6 October, setting out some revised proposals in respect of the offence of glorification.
	It is also worth recording that both the Home Affairs Select Committee in another place and the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which some of your Lordships serve, have taken evidence about the Bill.
	The Bill was introduced in another place on 26 October. Although, by cross-party agreement, it had an accelerated passage through the House, it is important to stress that it was subject to very full scrutiny there. The Committee stage, unusually, took place on the Floor of the House so that all Members could participate. The Report stage was extended by the Government to allow extra time for debate and, again unusually, there was a full Third Reading debate. There were also plenty of Divisions in the other place so what we have before us is a Bill that has been properly considered and represents the will of another place.
	The Bill has stimulated huge interest and controversy. It has rigorously been scrutinised by the other place as a result, and properly so.
	So much for the Bill's history. I should like to say a little about its content. Part 1 contains several new offences, the first of which is the offence of encouragement to terrorism, also known as indirect incitement. It is already an offence under our law directly to incite people to commit specific terrorist acts. We now want to be able to deal with those who incite terrorism more obliquely but who nevertheless contribute to creating a climate in which impressionable people might believe that terrorism was acceptable.
	In another place there was lengthy debate on the question of intent and, as a consequence, the Government brought forward amendments. The Bill now provides that a person commits an offence if he or she makes a statement and intends that members of the audience should regard it as an inducement to commit terrorist acts or is reckless as to that possibility. This will, among other things, enable the United Kingdom to ratify the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism, the first of the two international conventions which I referred to earlier.
	The Bill extends the provisions to those who disseminate terrorist material, including on the Internet, but makes it clear that those who simply transmit material which does not reflect their views will not be caught.
	The encouragement offence also includes glorification. Again, this was the subject of much debate in another place. It is, I am sure, something that your Lordships will want to discuss in some detail. So on this occasion I will simply confine my remarks to reminding your Lordships that the creation of an offence of glorification of terrorism was an explicit commitment in the manifesto on which the Labour Party fought the 2005 general election, in which we said:
	"So we will introduce new laws to help catch and convict those involved in helping to plan terrorist activity and who glorify or condone acts of terror".
	The Bill creates a new offence of acts preparatory to terrorism, a matter which has been discussed in this House on a number of occasions.
	This was well trailed and has hitherto commanded all-party support, as I trust it will in your Lordships' House.
	The Bill deals with training for terrorism and makes it an offence to give or receive training for terrorist purposes and to attend a terrorist training camp. I am sure your Lordships will see why these measures are necessary.
	The Bill contains the necessary measures to enable the United Kingdom to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Suppression of Nuclear Terrorism, the second of the two conventions. The changes which the UK requires to comply with this convention are relatively minor, but it is important that we act quickly in order to set an example to the rest of the world.
	The Bill also extends the offence of criminal trespass to civil nuclear sites. I am sure the House will understand the desirability of such sites as targets for terrorists and why they need the maximum possible protection.
	The Bill increases the penalties for certain terrorist-related offences to reflect the gravity of the offences which we are dealing with. All prosecutions for offences in Part 1 require the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions; any offences involving the affairs of another country also require the consent of the Attorney-General.
	I will say a few words about extra-territorial jurisdiction as it featured prominently in the debates in another place. There was concern that extra-territorial jurisdiction, for which the Bill originally provided, went too wide. The Government have responded to that concern. Accordingly, the Government brought forward amendments in another place to limit the extra-territorial application of the new offences effectively to the extent required by the two conventions.
	Part 2 of the Bill makes two changes in respect of proscription.
	Proscription is an important part of our armoury in the fight against terrorism and I am grateful that your Lordships recently endorsed the order to proscribe an additional 15 organisations.
	The Bill widens the criteria for proscription to encompass those groups which glorify terrorism, where it is reasonable to expect that such glorification will be seen by others as an inducement to emulate the terrorist acts in question. Given that we are creating a new incitement offence, it makes sense for the proscription criteria to mirror it.
	The other change is to allow us to deal, by order, with proscribed groups which change their name. It clearly cannot be desirable for a proscribed group to seek to evade the consequences of proscription simply by changing its name.
	The next item in the Bill, pre-charge detention, has attracted the greatest attention. The Government, acting on the clear professional advice of the police, believe that the maximum pre-charge detention period in terrorist cases should be 90 days. The reasons for this have been repeatedly set out by Ministers and by the police—most notably by Assistant Commissioner Hayman, the country's most senior anti-terrorist police officer.
	The Members of another place, as is their absolute right, rejected the advice of the police and the Government and chose to set the maximum limit at 28 days. As my right honourable friend the Home Secretary said, the Government accept the decision taken by the House. We will not seek to overturn it in another place—that other place is your Lordships' House.
	I understand that a number of your Lordships are minded to table amendments—if this matter came to Committee stage—to set the maximum limit at 90 days. I must tell your Lordships, on behalf of the Government, that that is not an amendment which we could now support.
	If such an amendment were so laid and pressed to a Division, on behalf of the Government, I would abstain. My Back-Bench colleagues would make their own individual judgments on the matter.
	It may be worth highlighting the other changes made to the Bill in respect of pre-charge detention. We have provided that all extensions beyond 14 days—all extensions—will be authorised by a High Court judge—or, in Scotland, a judge of the Court of Session. Up to 14 days, the consent of a district judge will, as now, be required. Authorisation will be on a weekly basis, though the judge will have discretion to grant shorter periods if the circumstances warrant it. At the behest of the other place, the Bill also includes a sunset clause. The power to hold people for up to 28 days prior to charge in terrorist cases will lapse and the limit will revert to 14 days unless there is an annual renewal vote in both Houses of Parliament.
	The rest of Part 2 contains mostly technical measures, including improvements to stop-and-search procedures and our warranty provisions. Again, we are very grateful for the support that we have received from the Opposition in respect of those measures. The Bill also makes a small change to the definition of terrorism, simply to bring threats against international bodies such as the United Nations within the scope of the definition. Beyond that, the Bill uses the tried-and-tested definition of terrorism. However, concern on that point was expressed in another place. Various amendments to provide new definitions were tabled but none was without problems or drawbacks.
	The Government do not believe that a better definition could be easily created but recognise that there is genuine concern on the point. Accordingly, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has invited the independent reviewer of our terrorism legislation, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, to carry out a review of the definition of terrorism. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, who is in his place, for agreeing to undertake the task. He has said that he will consult widely in carrying out his review and will report within one year of commencement of the Act. My right honourable friend has committed to laying his report before Parliament. He has also said that we will provide Parliament with an opportunity to debate and take a view on his conclusions. If consensus is achieved on a change to the existing definition, we would commit to bringing forward that change as soon as parliamentary time would allow.
	Part 3 contains the normal miscellaneous supplemental provisions. I should draw attention to Clause 35, which provides for an independent reviewer to be appointed to report on the operation of this legislation as well as the Terrorism Act 2000. That role is currently performed by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and I am sure that all noble Lords will appreciate the care and attention that he brings to his role. He is noted for his independence of thought, so noble Lords may be interested in what he has said about the Bill. At paragraph 111 of the report published on 12 October this year he said:
	"I regard the current proposals as providing a set of useful and necessary additions to the law to counter terrorism".
	No one can doubt the threat that we face from international terrorism. The challenge to us is to devise a legislative response that meets that threat while at the same time safeguarding our vital civil liberties. We are satisfied that the Bill meets that test, and I therefore commend it to the House.
	Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Baroness Scotland of Asthal.)

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, as the noble Baroness indicated, terrorism represents the biggest single threat to the security of the United Kingdom. Anyone who has any lingering doubts about that has only to contemplate the hideous atrocity that took place on 7 July.
	We fully support the Government's determination to conquer terrorists, and the Bill should prove an important weapon in their armoury. As the noble Baroness also indicated, we disagree with the Government on the scope of some clauses; but, in doing so, we are in absolutely no doubt that the Bill should have been brought forward.
	I should, at the outset, pay tribute to the sterling efforts of the right honourable gentleman, the Home Secretary in seeking to resolve some of the differences between us before the Bill completed its stages in another place. If he was unsuccessful in resolving what, I suppose, was the central issue of contention between us—the length of time for pre-charge detention—he had important successes in other respects, two of which I should like to stress. The first is the introduction of a sunset clause; and the second is the decision to give High Court judges a role in determining whether someone ought to remain in detention during the period from 14 to 28 days. Both are extremely constructive initiatives to emerge from what I regarded as a helpful initiative on the Government's behalf.
	As noble Lords are aware, the sting has been extracted from the most hotly contested issue between the Government and the Opposition in this Bill; that is, the length of pre-charge detention. The increase recommended in the Bill in another place, as the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, has indicated was a colossal 14 to 90 days. In the event, an amendment tabled at Report stage, to reduce the 90 days to 28, succeeded by an extraordinary 33 votes, thanks to an unprecedented rebellion by Government Back-Benchers. I am not going to dwell on the wisdom of the Prime Minister choosing to ignore the Home Secretary's political advice on this matter.
	We, as the Opposition, will not be tabling amendments to the length of time determined by the other place, 28 days, but, as the noble Baroness suggested, we cannot exclude the possibility of such an amendment coming from the Back Benches in your Lordships' House. I therefore feel compelled to say something about that issue.
	We yield to no one in our admiration for the way the police have conducted the battle against terrorism. We have read carefully the report by the Association of Chief Police Officers. We question, however, their conclusions about the right length of time for pre-charge detention. Our view is that that solution is not necessary to confront the problems identified by the police in their report. These problems are far better dealt with by investing more resources in decryption and interpretation facilities, and in allowing, in strictly controlled circumstances, intercept evidence to be used in court proceedings.
	It is important that we do not fall into the trap of assuming that a nation's security is enhanced by the constraint of its citizens' liberties. This lesson was no more vividly learnt than during the period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland when the policy of internment was pursued. It sharpened the differences between the two communities; it exacerbated the problem we faced in the no-go areas and, perhaps, above all, it proved a massive disincentive to Catholics to provide information to our security forces.
	The 90-day pre-charge detention period is not as visible as the internment issue, but the fact is that if someone is detained for 90 days, that is a period which amounts to a six-month sentence from a court. It is highly likely to affect, disproportionately, British Muslims; and there is no doubt that in many instances, to a greater or lesser degree, those who serve such a sentence—along with their friends and families—will become disaffected. We will defeat terrorism in this country only if we have the full co-operation of the Muslim community. It is vital that members of the community recognise that their interests lie in the values of our society being upheld. If that is so, then the necessary intelligence will come forward to ensure that early warnings are given to the security forces about terrorist intentions.
	Two outstanding issues in the Bill are especially troubling to us, both of which are concerned with Clause 1. The first is the state of mind required of someone who commits the offence in Clause 1 of "encouragement". The second concerns the definition of "indirect incitement".
	It is trite for me to point out that, in almost all circumstances, in order to be convicted of a criminal offence in this country, you need either to intend to commit that offence or to be reckless as to whether it is committed "reckless" in the sense of not caring one way or another whether the offence is committed.
	Superficially, the Government have followed the tradition very carefully. Clause 1(2) makes it clear that a person who intends to commit the offence of encouragement or a person who is reckless in relation to committing the offence of encouragement are the only two categories of person capable of being prosecuted. But if one's eye drops to Clause 1(3), one sees that recklessness for the purposes of this Bill is given a very special definition,
	"a person is to be taken as reckless as to whether a statement is understood",
	as encouraging terrorism if,
	"he could not reasonably have failed to be aware of that likelihood".
	There can be no doubt that that imports into the Bill a test of negligence, which has no place in our criminal law in relation to an offence of this sort, and we shall be tabling amendments to that effect when we consider this legislation in Committee.
	Our second concern is the definition of indirect encouragement in subsections (4) and (5) of Clause 1. I shall read out the subsection because it is absolutely vital to understand how difficult it will be for anyone making a statement to know whether or not it falls within its terms. Subsection (4) states that,
	"statements that are likely to be understood by members of the public as indirectly encouraging the commission or preparation of acts of terrorism . . . include every statement which—
	(a) glorifies the commission or preparation . . . of such acts or offences; and
	(b) is a statement from which those members of the public could reasonably be expected to infer that what is being glorified is being glorified as conduct that should be emulated by them in existing circumstances".
	Subsection (5) states that:
	"For the purposes of this section the questions how a statement is likely to be understood and what members of the public could reasonably be expected to infer from it must be determined having regard both—
	(a) to the content of the statements as a whole; and
	(b) to the circumstances and manner of its publication".
	A fundamental principle in our criminal law is the principle of certainty. We must know where we stand in relation to the criminal law. We must know where the line is between legality and illegality. That principle has now been reinforced by Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In my submission, subsections (4) and (5) fall well short of meeting those tests.
	The definition of "glorification" is given in the interpretation section of the Bill, which states:
	"'glorification' includes any form of praise or celebration, and cognate expressions are to be construed accordingly".
	I shall be most interested to find out in Committee exactly what the Government think that expression means. It is extremely vague.
	Vague, too, is the link between glorification and emulation. What about the need to address the contents of the published statement and the circumstances and manner of that publication in trying to establish how a statement is to be understood to be likely to encourage terrorism? What might the public infer from that? The subsections fall well short of the standard that we are entitled to expect from a legislative draftsman in drafting a criminal offence.
	In another place, the Government suggested that we need not really worry about this because prosecutions could be instituted only by the Director of Public Prosecutions. I suppose we should deduce from that that the Director of Public Prosecutions will always know what the law is. However, that is an extremely bad constitutional principle. What matters is not what the Director of Public Prosecutions thinks the law is, but what Parliament says the law is. There is a real danger that the Government will substitute the rule of law for prosecutorial discretion.
	The Bill in other respects, too, does not meet the standard of certainty. That is one of the areas upon which the Opposition intend to focus fully in Committee and on Report. There are many other issues that we intend to address as well.
	The noble Baroness has already mentioned the definition of "terrorism", and we are extremely pleased to learn that the Government have decided to ask the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, to look into the definition in the course of the first year of the Act's operation. We are also concerned about the geographical scope of some of the offences. What seems highly questionable to us is whether somebody making a statement abroad, which is caught by Clause 1, in relation to terrorist acts that are committed wholly abroad, ought to be caught by the Bill. We are also concerned about statements made by individuals in this country about alleged terrorist acts abroad, in circumstances where they are simply supporting the opposition to a particularly repellent totalitarian regime.
	There are problems in Clause 2 of the Bill concerning the dissemination of terrorist publications, especially for those working in universities or lending libraries. Those who are involved in Internet activity will be extremely concerned about Clause 3(2) and the powers that it gives for a constable to issue notices. We shall be tabling amendments to that clause as well. We also believe that the Government are wrong in being determined not to provide a defence to the definition of "Training for terrorism" under Clause 6.
	In making these points, I wish to repeat what I said at the beginning of my speech. We support the Bill and, in tabling amendments, we want to make it better than it is. We hope that when it becomes an Act it will significantly enhance the Government's ability to confront terrorism.

Lord McNally: My Lords, when the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, gave his Dimbleby lecture on Wednesday last, he asked a number of thought-provoking questions about the nature and powers of policing in our modern age. Some of those questions were very difficult to answer, but one was very simple: he asked who should decide. There can be only one answer to that in a parliamentary democracy—Parliament must decide. If we needed any reminder of the awesome nature of that responsibility, events in Bradford on Friday afternoon came as a timely reminder. If we in Parliament insist, and rightly so, that it is here that we must decide the kind and extent of powers we wish to give those who fight crime and terror on our behalf, we have to do so with due regard to the dangers that the police and security services face in the line of duty.
	If the dangers of modern policing are one factor which sobers our collective responsibility, so does the knowledge that the security of the realm and the safety of the citizen are the first duties of government. This House is full of collective wisdom on all the matters covered by the Bill. It has no little experience in dealing with such legislation, as this, after all, is the sixth such Bill we have had to consider since 1997. Each of the preceding Acts, as does this Bill, ratcheted a couple of notches in the loss of hard-won civil liberties and hard-won freedoms. Parliament, sometimes with great reluctance and sometimes with grim unity, has sanctioned new powers in the face of threats and evidence of clear and present danger.
	But if we are to do our job with responsibility, we must examine whether the powers given in the past have been properly and effectively used, as well as whether the new powers requested in the Bill are justified. Otherwise every terrorist outrage will bring forth another Bill, another notch on the ratchet and another turn of the screw until we find ourselves without the civil liberties we are fighting terrorism to defend.
	If Parliament has a difficult job, so, too, do Ministers. To govern is to make decisions. We all know the high regard in which the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, is held in the House. I hold a similar high regard for the Home Secretary. He is a personal friend of more than 25 years' standing. Two weeks ago he addressed the Liberal Democrat Lords Group, with great charm, great conviction and a total mastery of his brief.
	That very favourable impression was only faintly marred when he gave an interview to the Daily Telegraph a few days later headlined:
	"When I listen to liberals I think they're pathetic".
	That kind of statement, coupled with another one from the same article—
	"I was never a civil libertarian"—
	worries and concerns us. I have more trust in this Home Secretary than either of his immediate predecessors—I think his instincts are right—but he seems to fall too easily into new Labour language which seeks to make "liberal" a pejorative term, a tactic learnt directly from the neo-conservatives in the United States.
	The result of this approach, espoused by the Home Secretary but promulgated vigorously by the Prime Minister, is to position Mr Blair and his tough no-nonsense Government as the only true defenders of national security and the safety of the citizen, and the rest of us as soft on terrorism. It was that approach that prevented the all-party consensus on this legislation developing over the summer. Both David Davis and Mark Oaten had promised full co-operation to try to develop an all-party approach only to find that the Prime Minister had gone solo in his headline-grabbing press conference on 5 August.
	However, as we have heard, in spite of the Sun-inspired hysteria and the quite improper involvement of senior police officers in a lobbying exercise on behalf of the Government, the other place held its nerve and the Bill comes to us with the key clause on 90 days reduced to 28 days. I suspect that in the course of this debate we will hear the opinions of those who support the original 90 days and those who are unhappy even with the extension to 28. I hope that we can listen to all views with respect. I agree with Frank Dobson MP, who said that what divides us is not the desire to defeat terrorism but genuine differences of opinion on how best to achieve that aim.
	Over the past 10 years, I have listened to many debates in this House about the right balance between civil liberties and the need to protect the citizen from crime and terror. One of the most memorable moments for me came shortly after I had arrived in the House, when Lord Taylor of Gosforth, who had recently retired on health grounds from the position of Lord Chief Justice and who was terminally ill, came and spoke and heavily criticised Mr Michael Howard's White Paper, Protecting the Public. I remember the passion of that speech, and the cheers from the Labour Benches at its sentiments. Nine years later, Labour Home Secretaries outdo each other in trying to prove how much tougher they are than Michael Howard ever was as they dance to the tunes of intolerance piped by the Sun and the Daily Mail.
	I am sure that noble Lords opposite will say that circumstances have changed since they cheered Lord Taylor on a decade ago, and they are right. There is no doubt that the rapid changes in technology, whether it be in the ease of international transport or the revolution in electronic communications, mean that the terrorist threat is more global and more complex that we have faced in the past. The communications revolution also means that grievances and injustices are transmitted in an instant to radicalise and inflame individuals and communities.
	That makes it all the more important, however, that we hold firm to our own values and freedoms. I read with interest what President Jimmy Carter wrote in the Observer yesterday, when he bemoaned how easy it was for a society to become brutalised and desensitised by the very powers it takes to protect itself. That is why, even in the face of changed circumstances and present threats, we hold firm to certain beliefs. Torturing people is wrong, full stop, and we cannot condone it, even by proxy. Depriving people of their liberty is a serious matter that can be done only by due process of law. Freedom of speech and opinion are important ingredients of a functioning democracy, which can be circumscribed only with great care.
	That does not mean that we are passive in the face of new threats. We on these Benches have argued consistently that we must look for ways to bring prosecutions through a recognised judicial process, and we need a security service with the power, resources and capabilities to penetrate terrorist organisations and thwart their evil intent. In seeking to provide a framework for such laws and powers, both we and the Conservative Party have played a full and constructive part, both before and after the events of 7 July. Until the Prime Minister decided that political capital was to be gained by going it alone and second-guessing his Home Secretary, both David Davis and Mark Oaten had made constructive contributions to the framing of large parts of this Bill.
	We have sought consistently to find effective, rather than headline-grabbing, solutions. That is why we would prefer, for example, to ensure that our intelligence and security services had the resources to do the job rather than divert millions—or is it billions?—into an identity card scheme that will have little practical effect on the war on terror.
	Beyond the powers, the technology, the equipment and the intelligence needed by those we ask to defend us, there is a need to win hearts and minds. We have to ensure that all our fellow citizens, from every community, see the war against terror as their war too. As the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, said, the lesson from Northern Ireland and other areas of conflict is that laws or methods that do not win hearts and minds inflame problems rather than solve them.
	So we need no lectures from the Prime Minister about the dangers posed by terrorism, nor should there be any doubt about our willingness to support measures and resources to enable the police and security forces to fight the war on terrorism. The issue before the House today is whether this Bill is the best way forward and whether it represents the most effective way of providing those powers and resources without fatally undermining the freedoms and civil liberties that the war on terrorism is being fought to defend.
	The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, referred to Northern Ireland. I remember another speech made in this House by the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, in the debate on terrorism just before the general election. He said that internment without trial had proved the best recruiting sergeant that the IRA had ever had. So, in considering this legislation, I commend a dictum of an old mentor of mine, Lord Gormley. Joe used to say, "Don't build platforms for malcontents to stand on". As well as examining how tough this legislation is and how far it meets popular demands for resolute action, let us bear in mind also the warning of the noble Lord, Lord King, that draconian measures can prove counterproductive, and Joe Gormley's wisdom about providing the enemy with a rallying point and a cause.
	The Minister explained the background to the Bill, and the House is extremely grateful to her. My noble friends Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Goodhart will give detailed responses to the proposals and lead from these Benches in Committee. We will hear also from my noble friend Lord Carlile, who has rendered such distinguished service as an independent reviewer of the working of the earlier terrorist legislation. As we have already heard, he is so independent of mind as already to have made it into the Minister's speech. We will hear also from a number of my other colleagues, not least my noble friend Lady Williams, who is a former Home Office Minister.
	We on these Benches will examine constructively the proposals in the Bill and the lessons learnt from both the terrorist attack of 7 July and the almost successful attack two weeks later. We will do so not only in terms of the efficacy of the new proposals but also in the light of what the Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken Macdonald QC, has called the,
	"enormous amount of legislation that can be used in the fight against terrorism already".
	Liberty, in its briefing on the Bill, makes the valid point that certain clauses cast the net of criminality so wide that people will be loath to say anything that might be interpreted as an encouragement to terrorism. It goes on to make the following point:
	"This is not area where the criminal law is currently lacking. As well as the incitement offences we have referred to, it is already illegal to incite terrorism by any written or electronic publication, to collect or make any record of information useful for terrorism, or possess any article for the purpose of terrorism".
	We have a long debate ahead of us. The Prime Minister, however, still seems to have difficulty in understanding and getting his head round the process which is under way. Today's Guardian reports that he is again threatening your Lordships if we do any serious damage to the Bill. The report carries a rather strange headline:
	"Lords threaten rough ride for anti-terror bill".
	But the story underneath it contains the less-than-startling news that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and I have said that we will give the Bill "a thorough going-over" and scrutinise its provisions line by line before sending it back to the Commons. That is not news; that is what this House of Lords does. That is what this House of Lords does very well. That is what this House of Lords will do to this Bill today and in the weeks ahead.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, in supporting the Second Reading of this Bill today, I speak from the particular experience over the past few years of endeavouring to tackle the issue of terrorism in an international context. Many of your Lordships know far more than I about the powers of the Home Office and the police in dealing with terrorism. Others have great expertise in our legal system and how well or badly equipped we are to deal with the terrorist threat in our courts. Still others are well versed in the powers and practices of the special services, as evidenced by the excellent debate in your Lordships' House on intercept evidence last Friday.
	My experience over the past few years, however, has been in dealing with the international aspects of terrorism—our dialogue with overseas countries about how we tackle this shared threat most effectively and how we co-operate where we can. Crucially, like many others working in the field, I have concentrated on how we fulfil our obligations and deep-seated desire to uphold human rights and human dignity; not only of those who may be, or are thought to be, involved in terrorism, but also of the innocent victims of terrorism, actual and potential: the rights of those killed, maimed or shattered for ever by those loss of those loved, through an act of terrorism.
	I shall confine my arguments to the three aspects of the Bill which have caused most controversy: first, the establishment of a new offence of encouragement to acts of terrorism; secondly, the measure which widens the grounds for proscription to include the glorification of terrorism; thirdly, the extension of the period of detention to 28 days.
	We are all aware of the international nature of terrorism today. It is different from the terrorism that most of us have lived through; for example, in relation to Northern Ireland. Suicide bombing is different. The terrorist who is not only reckless of his or her own life, but positively seeks their own death as an intrinsic part of that terrorism, is very different from one who needs escape and shelter after the carnage they cause. For the suicide bomber, there is no negotiation. Whatever the grievances or injustices, perceived or real, that have lead to the decision to perpetrate terrorism, the suicide bomber's objective is to destroy not only the target of their terrorism, but to destroy themselves too.
	An individual who straps explosives around their body and gets on a bus or train in London, Madrid or Tel Aviv; who walks into a hotel in Sharm el-Sheik, a wedding in Amman or a nightclub in Bali; who knows that they must stand next to those who are sitting in order to cause the maximum number of fatalities—that person needs neither a support team nor an extensive group or planners, nor a safe haven.
	We often talk about terrorist activity today as if it is carried out by organisations with recognisable structures and hierarchies. But all too often, today's terrorism is very different. It is less organisation-based and more movement-based. Networks exist, but they are often not the hierarchical organisations which many of us would recognise. Movement-based terrorism peddles its special band of hatred through direct incitement; through encouragement, mainly of young people, to emulate those who are held up as martyrs for their own acts of mass murder through direct glorification of the devastation and death that they have caused.
	Those who object to the inclusion of these measures because they believe they are too broad or too precise do so, I know, through the best of all possible motives; to protect freedom of expression and the rights we all cherish in a democratic society to speak out against perceived or real tyranny. But the fact is that, in the struggle against terrorism, those who incite—those who encourage and glorify terrorism—have a huge advantage over those of us who believe in democracy, the rule of law and human rights. The very language of democracy—of human rights and freedom of expression—is anathema to them. By contrast, the language of extremism is familiar, relying as it does on absolute and authoritarian views which brook no argument. In short, we believe that everybody has the right to argue their case. They believe in their right to suppress that argument and the democratic debate that goes with it.
	In discussing these issues, as I have extensively over the past few years, I have come across two recurring themes—and two recurring themes increasingly in the past year or so. One is a fear that there may be growing hostility to the Muslim community in the United Kingdom, and that Muslims may be likely to suffer from any new laws to combat terrorism. The second is that, for far too long, the United Kingdom has been soft on extremists and soft on terrorism. It is claimed that we allow individuals to use and abuse our liberal laws to promote instability in their home countries. Now, it is claimed, we are getting a taste of our own medicine. That is hard to hear, I know, but I hear these themes too often to ignore them. I believe that both need answering robustly.
	Those in another place have changed the Bill in the period of detention permissible. That is of course their right in a democracy, but in a democracy I can also say: I believe that to be a profound misjudgment. I know, from experience, how long it takes to deal with issues of terrorism overseas—not just on a theoretical basis, but in dealing with practicalities. There are issues of information exchange which might impinge upon sovereignty; procedures which may be unconstitutional in one jurisdiction and permissible in another; police systems and interior ministries; courts which vary enormously in terms of the evidence permissible and the role of lawyers. Internationally, we are not yet sufficiently integrated in our approach for matters to move quickly, even where there is certainty as to the identity of a suspect. Where there is a degree of uncertainty, the problems are hugely compounded, which does not even begin to touch on the delicate and sensitive issues surrounding specialist agencies.
	I have no doubt that in this great dilemma—of the need for security to be balanced against the rights of some—our laws need to be more robust if we are to fulfil our first duty; to protect the safety and security of the people of this country. So I hope that when we come to debate the Bill in detail we shall be thinking not only of theories but of facts—of what really happens when security fails. I hope we shall think not only of the few who want to destroy innocent lives, but of the many who deserve protection, and who want and expect their democracy and human rights to be protected by this Parliament.

Lord Hurd of Westwell: My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, the Minister and all those who support the Government's case have often, in recent months, spoken of the need to strike a balance between the liberty of the individual and the safety of the community. They suggest, as the noble Baroness has just done, that we need to strike that balance in a different place now because of the particular dramatic, sinister brand of terrorism with which we are faced. She perfectly rightly said that suicide bombing is different. We have to accept that basic point. Those of us who are, by nature, liberals with a small "l"—I say that to the noble Lord, Lord McNally—and who believe passionately in the liberty of the individual, and know how vulnerable that liberty has always been to arguments of public safety, have to accept that we do need to re-think the balance.
	However, we should not suspend the need for balance. We should not allow terrorists to unhinge our powers of judgment on these matters, or to induce us to forget some very valid lessons from the past. That is why, personally, I much preferred the line taken by the Prime Minister in the days immediately after the July bombings, when he said that we must not allow the terrorists to coerce us into changing our basic way of life. I preferred that to the mood which was with him on 5 August before the holiday, which produced the rather hectic proposals then, and, more recently, the hectic efforts to push them through in the Bill in its original form in another place.
	Against that background, I should like to say a few words about two parts of the Bill: first, Clause 1 and the glorifying and encouraging of terrorism. Of course I fully accept what the Minister said, that that has come to us substantially improved from another place. I think that the effect is still somewhat obscure. I should like to give a bit of advice to the Home Secretary, if that is not presumptuous. We should not spend too much time pursuing individuals because they delight in saying disgraceful things. These people earn, or think they earn, their headlines by this public unpleasantness. But obnoxious clerics, and, in my experience, obnoxious people of all descriptions, tend to have good lawyers. I think that the Home Secretary would find himself wasting a lot of time if he went down this path too often. I do not believe that there is serious evidence that these loud mouths are essentially responsible for acts of terrorism. We need to worry not so much about the loud mouths but about the quiet acts of subversion and training from dangerous people up and down our country, who, on the whole, keep their mouths shut.
	Of course there is a difficult distinction between those who express hateful views and those who actually prepare acts of terrorism. The Bill attempts to make that distinction. The best part in it is the belated action on the recommendation of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, in, I think, 1996, that we should make illegal preparing acts of terrorism. I do not believe that the part of the Bill dealing with the glorification of terrorism will make our lives safer.
	Perhaps I may add another word of advice to the Home Secretary. It is not directly relevant because it comes under the Royal Prerogative. But, in this day of television and the Internet, it is rather old-fashioned to rely too much on powers of exclusion. If you are thinking of vulnerable young men in Birmingham or Leeds, it does not make a huge amount of difference if the incitement comes to them from someone in London or someone in Beirut. The international media today do not rely very much on frontiers, or, I am sorry to say, on the edicts of the Home Secretary.
	The second point relates to the powers of detention in Clauses 23 and 24. Again, as the Minister said, these have come to us, in my view in a greatly improved form, from the other place. But scrutiny is still needed. This is the main point I want to make this afternoon. I am convinced, from my own experience and from everything I have read or heard since, that intelligence not legislation is the key to successful counter-terrorism. I fear that our intelligence in these matters is, again, scanty. I say "again" because we know of the difficulties we got into in Iraq because of scanty intelligence. I believe that our intelligence is scanty as regards what is happening in our towns and cities. I do not blame the police or the intelligence agencies for that; it is not easy or quick to concentrate resources, which are limited anyway, on new and difficult targets. But the scantiness of intelligence must affect our judgment on the powers which it is right to give to those who have to act on that intelligence.
	That brings me to the role of the police. It is right in our democracy that the Government should ask for, and whether asked for or not, that the police should give—in private to Ministers and to the public—their views on the powers that they need. But Ministers should not suspend their own powers of judgment, or come to Parliament telling us that it is the view of the police or the agencies so we must accept it. Nor should the police urge Parliament to suspend its views or judgment, but that is what has been happening.
	We have an admirable and effective police service, and we have been reminded again in the past 48 hours how much we owe them. We do not ask them to draft our laws on criminal justice, any more than we ask teachers or nurses to draft our laws on education or health. Nor certainly should Ministers propel the police into the front line of parliamentary debate to bring about the results that the Government want.
	There are two reasons why there is a distinction between the role of Ministers and the role of the police. First, there are considerations that are for Parliament and Ministers and not necessarily for the police—for example, the effect of a Bill on the views of the minority community and on its willingness to co-operate with the police and the Government. We know that we need co-operation in the fight against terrorism. That is arguable; I am not expressing a view. But that argument should take place in this House and in the other place. It is not a matter essentially for the police.
	Secondly—I am trying to deal with this point delicately—the police in their state of scanty intelligence are not infallible. I am not talking about detention after charge and before conviction. But detention without charge, whether for 90 or 28 days—obviously it is worse if it lasts for 90 days—can ruin an individual's life. He can lose his job or his family; he can go bust. It is hard to defend the use of that degree of detention if it is based on the kind of intelligence that led—we do not know how yet—to the shooting of the innocent Brazilian recently.
	On a personal note, I spent many difficult weeks—two Christmases running—poring over the evidence in the terrorist cases of the Birmingham and Guildford bombers. In those days it was the personal responsibility of the Home Secretary, but fortunately that is no longer so. Initially the police were entirely clear and absolute in their view that the verdicts based on police evidence were right. In both cases, after many twists and turns the verdicts turned out to be wrong. In judging such matters it is necessary to have that kind of memory and recollection.
	It is wrong for Ministers and their press officers to suggest that it is opportunistic or disreputable to give close, occasionally sceptical, scrutiny to these proposals. The noble Baroness, in introducing the Bill, breathed sweetness and light, as usual, but she knows perfectly well the remarks that were made in another place after the recent votes. It would be irresponsible to ignore the threat of terrorism and the fact that the threat, as the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, said, is more dangerous than and different from the one we had before. But it would be equally bad and irresponsible if we as a House of Parliament failed to give the Bill not partisan hostility, but the kind of scrutiny—and occasional sceptical scrutiny—that it deserves.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, I know that several noble Lords later in the debate will talk about the great anxiety in university libraries regarding Clause 2. I want specifically to ask the Minister whether the Government have looked properly at the problems for the few universities that have specialist departments for the study of terrorism.
	In a powerful speech at Third Reading, my right honourable friend Kenneth Clarke took the terrorist threat very seriously. But he, as I think did the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, suggested that the Bill adds little, if anything, to our present legal protection. He said,
	"at heart I still suspect that this is gesture politics, padded out with measures to make it look more convincing".—[Official Report, Commons, 10/11/05; col. 521.]
	Whatever one thinks about the rest of the Bill, perhaps that is the cause of the problems of Clause 2. It is put in as padding, with insufficient thought of its side effects.
	The matter was first brought to my attention by a letter from the Vice Chancellor of the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, passed to me by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. The noble and learned Lord is Chancellor of the university but, being a serving Law Lord, feels unable to speak on this somewhat controversial matter. There is great concern at Strathclyde that the wide and uncertain definition of terrorist publications in Clause 2 could lay librarians, and indeed the university's governing body, open to a criminal offence.
	When I contacted the University of St Andrews, it had far greater worries. It has an institute for terrorism studies. Professor Wilkinson of that institute, I was told this morning by a distinguished expert on this matter, is recognised as the foremost non-lawyer expert on terrorism in this country. That is high tribute from a lawyer. Professor Wilkinson and the institute see to it that part of the university library at St Andrews is allocated specifically to material relating to terrorism. In that section are books, journals and video recordings of television programmes, including recordings of Arabic television stations' programmes. In addition, the library is hoping to have deposited with it material from an organisation specialising in Iranian studies.
	All this is obviously a vital resource for important present-day study of what motivates terrorists, how they behave and how events may be shaped in the future. The problem at St Andrews is how, in the face of Clause 2, a librarian will know what material he can legally put into the library. The books and videos most enlightening to the researchers are likely to be precisely those described in Clause 2(2) as terrorist publications,
	"or . . . information of assistance in the commission or preparation of such acts".
	Yet under Clause 2(1), it is a criminal offence to loan or enable others,
	"to obtain, read, listen to or look at such a publication",
	with a penalty of up to seven years' imprisonment on indictment, or six months in Scotland on summary conviction.
	Should a librarian be charged with such an offence, under subsection (8) his defence would be, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay, that he had not examined the publication, he did not suspect that it was a terrorist publication and he did not himself agree with it. In the terrorism section of the St Andrews library, a librarian would clearly have examined an item; it would not be in library if he had not. It might well be on the shelves because it was a terrorist publication: no defence there. On the third point, the Home Secretary has said categorically that those who simply transmit material that does not reflect their views cannot be caught by the Bill. The Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries, along with the British Library and others, have sought legal opinion on this matter. They are told that across all universities, it is likely that the librarian will find the defence in Clause 2 very difficult indeed to maintain. If that is so, I would have thought that at St Andrews it would be virtually impossible.
	When the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, replies to the debate, can she tell the House in responding to this important matter whether in the drafting of Clause 2 the Government have taken properly into account the particular position of libraries at universities which specialise in the study of terrorism? If she cannot give a certain response today, I would be grateful if she would write to me before we reach the Committee stage because I regard this as a very serious matter. I suspect that Clause 2 needs considerable amendment, and if the matter hangs on the redefinition of "terrorism" which the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, is to produce in due course, what on earth is the University of St Andrews to do in the mean time?

Baroness Henig: My Lords, first of all I declare an interest as president of the Association of Police Authorities. I have spent the past 16 years working with senior police officers on a broad range of issues. My first point, which I make very strongly, is that throughout that time I have done everything I can to ensure that policing and security issues, at both local and national level, are considered on their merits and not on the basis of party political considerations.
	I confess that I was extremely surprised and disappointed at the partisan tone of some of the discussions on the legislation in the other place. However, I know that your Lordships will share my strong views that we must approach the legislation in a non-partisan way and consider it in the interests of the safety, security and civil rights of all our citizens and communities.
	I must make a second preliminary point. The police have been criticised—unfairly in my view—for giving us the benefit of their professional advice. A former Home Secretary in the other place castigated them on the grounds that they had, in his view, started to lobby for a political position in Parliament. That is precisely the sort of intemperate language that so damagingly politicises the debate on the Bill. We heard echoes here, earlier today, from the Liberal Democrat leader in the House. The police have given their professional opinion on the measures needed to combat terrorism, just as doctors, teachers and other professionals have been asked for the benefit of their expertise on potential legislation in their fields.
	We need experts to give advice but it is surely up to us, as politicians, to decide how much or how little of it to accept. On a number of occasions in the past I have disagreed with senior police officers on one matter or another. We thrashed the issues out—sometimes I stuck to my guns; sometimes I was persuaded to change my mind—but local accountability for policing and the tripartite structure mean that it is local and national politicians who agree the policing strategies and frame the laws, not the police. However, in discharging our responsibilities, we need to listen carefully to what the police and security services are telling us.
	I shall confine myself to commenting on only a few of the provisions in the Bill in order to keep to time. First, I welcome the fact that we are updating our laws to deal with the dangers which now face us in this new century and filling in vital gaps. I am a non-lawyer but some of the provisions on the statute book seem to be hopelessly inadequate to deal with the kinds of crimes which we know are currently being contemplated. For example, is the charge of conspiring to cause a public nuisance adequate to describe the plans of a small number of fanatics aiming to poison our drinking water or the air that we breathe? I particularly welcome the clauses which deal with the threat of nuclear terrorism—a horrendous prospect but, none the less, one which we must take seriously. As many noble Lords have already said, Clause 5, which relates to acts preparatory to terrorism, will cover the early stages of terrorist activities and also cover those people who facilitate the carrying out of terrorist acts.
	This brings me to Clause 23. I have listened carefully to arguments from the Police Service about why it needs extra time to hold terrorist suspects before charges are brought. As my noble friend Lady Ramsay has already pointed out, terrorist suspects may have to be taken into custody at a far earlier stage of proceedings to protect the public. There are then a huge range of tasks that officers have to undertake, which must not be under-estimated, ranging from decryption of computers, other code breaking, analysis of telephone calls, scanning of CCTV footage, searches of premises and vehicles, interviewing of potential witnesses, contact with foreign police and security services, translations and so on. This list of tasks is not imaginary or exaggerated. After July of this year, 80,000 videos of CCTV footage had to be scrutinised, 14,000 fingerprints taken at 160 suspected crime sites, as well as lethal chemicals in a private house made safe, which took two weeks.
	The security services are supporting the police in wanting a longer pre-charge period. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, described 90 days as practicable and sensible. I am struck by the fact that all those people who have had access to security and intelligence information support a pre-charge detention period of far more than 28 days. I find it hard to support 28 days for the simple reason that I am not clear what logic lies behind it. In the other place, the mover of the proposal for 28 days, when questioned on this very point, replied that it was double the existing 14 days and that is why he chose it. But that is not good enough to counter the strong arguments coming from the police.
	There are three further arguments for 28 days or less that I have heard, all of which I respect. These are that detention for longer without charge could radicalise young Muslims, in particular, and make ethnic communities less likely to supply vital community intelligence to the police; that it will fatally undermine civil liberties built-up in this country painstakingly over centuries; and that it is the maximum period many people think is not likely to be contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights. I respect all those arguments.
	However, I have to set against them the chilling warning from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, as we have already heard, that under present time limitations, significant conspiracies to commit terrorist acts have gone unprosecuted and that this is not in the public interest. I do not know, but I fear, that in the past year potential terrorists may have been in police hands and then released into the community because the police did not have long enough to build up a case against them. This is likely to be the case with 28 days, which is why I find it hard to support. As a large number of people have said to me over the past few weeks, "We have human rights too: not to be blown up or injured in a terrorist attack". Governments therefore have to do everything possible to protect the public, and, on all the evidence I have heard, 28 days' detention—in the case of a very small number of suspected terrorists—will not be long enough.
	I would not go to the stake for 90 days, but I believe an absolute minimum of 60 days is necessary for public protection. It needs to be emphasised that we are talking about a small number of cases, and that a High Court judge needs to agree that the time extension is justified on a week-by-week basis. All of us have to make difficult judgments about where the balance now lies between civil liberties on the one hand and public protection on the other. My judgment, in the face of the deadly threats facing us, is that Clause 23 does not at present strike that balance. I am deeply concerned about it, and I hope other noble Lords will agree with me that we should try hard to persuade the other place to think again.

Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, has put one side of the case strongly and eloquently. Let me say to her, because I am sure she accepts this, that none of us can for one moment support the capricious, cruel activities of terrorists that have destroyed the lives of a great many people, and will doubtless destroy the lives of others. The problem the House confronts is, quite straightforwardly, how far we go in destroying the liberties we have enjoyed for centuries in an effort to stop terrorism, and, in doing that, how far we would give the terrorists exactly what they want.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, talked about the amount of consultation around this Bill. I believe that the Home Secretary indeed tried to consult, and wanted to create a consensus. That consensus began to come under great strain, however, and colleagues in the House will remember that he spoke in another place about an attempt to reach a compromise on—at that time—the huge issue of 90 days, not long after the Prime Minister effectively indicated in his press conference of 5 August that he did not wish to pursue the issue of consultation further. It would have been immensely helpful if the Prime Minister had thrown his weight behind the arguments for consensus and consultation, but I think any fair-minded person would have to agree that at a certain point he ceased to do so.
	As for the point about the representations made by the police, of course I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, that the police are completely free to indicate their views about legislation. As a former Home Office Minister I recall their doing so. I cannot actually recall any previous instance where chief inspectors rang up Members of Parliament personally to advocate the way they should vote on measures before the House. That, to say the least, is very unusual. It crosses a boundary that, on reflection, may not turn out to be absolutely wise.
	Several of my noble friends and law-makers from elsewhere have talked about Clause 1 and later clauses in the Bill. I want to address Clauses 2 and 3 in particular. They were raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, but deserve a little further investigation.
	The associations of librarians were not consulted about the Bill. They wrote to the Home Office on 26 and 31 October, pointing out the grave dangers they saw in the proposed legislation. They did not receive a reply at that point. They then sought to reach their own sponsoring department, the Department of Culture, Sport and the Media. The DCMS, addressed by them on 31 October, referred them to the Home Secretary, and did not itself take up the cause. It is only later today that the library associations will meet the Home Secretary. He is a very busy man, but that still does not quite explain why his own department did not go in great detail into the implications of Clauses 2 and 3.
	Let me spell them out. Those implications are that any librarian and any lecturer in a university might be criminalised. Those are not just the idle thoughts of a spineless Liberal; they are based on very senior legal opinion. Phrases such as "dissemination", "examination" and "endorsement" could be wrapped up with the legislation that already precisely defines the duties of librarians and university librarians and it has not, as far as I know, been repealed.
	The legislation affecting the British Library, the British Library Act 1972—which I know about because I was much connected with the foundation of that library—places a clear duty on the library to promote knowledge, to give assistance to those who wish to have access to documents, publications and other forms of information. The Act is quite clear and it is further strengthened by the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003, which laid on publishers an obligation to provide, and on particular libraries—among which are the British Library and certain university libraries—an absolute obligation to accept, publications which were, by law, required to be given to those libraries. It is not clear from the drafting of the Bill—I am not a lawyer, but I have consulted those who are—whether, for example, receiving, by law, a publication which appears to advocate, sponsor or support terrorism would be treated for these purposes as an examination. It is not clear whether, when the library in question catalogues that publication, this does not constitute endorsement. The drafting of this legislation is terrifyingly weak and terrifyingly far-reaching. It could indeed mean that our universities will be profoundly restricted in their first and overwhelming obligation, which is to find knowledge and pursue truth.
	I shall give one example of the ways in which other countries have dealt with this matter. I do not think, with respect, that even the strongest supporters of this legislation would be able very easily to deny that the United States has pursued these matters with great determination and firmness. The USA Patriot Act of 2001 precisely indicates that, in the case of the dissemination of publications and legislation affecting universities and others, the First Amendment to the US Constitution stands supreme. Nothing can interfere with it. It is of course the amendment which states that there shall be freedom of speech and that this is a sacred duty. So in the United States, despite all its passionate feelings about terrorism, which it certainly holds as strongly anyone in this House or another place, nothing can affect the freedom of speech and expression.
	So instead of executing a wide sweep and attempting to restrain and limit what universities can teach and what librarians can disseminate, as we are doing, the United States concentrates entirely on the rights of government to obtain records about their loaning and their reading habits from librarians. The First Amendment is so strong that it is worth quoting. It states that disclosure of communications or customer records to a government entity, unless it is voluntary, is permissible only,
	"if the provider reasonably believes that an emergency involving immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to any person justifies disclosure of the information".
	Ironically, earlier today, a Question was asked about the importance of overseas students' attendance at British universities. If one has a choice between a country whose universities are able to provide publications, are able to give lecturers freedom—subject only to the rights of the FBI to establish whether there have been publications which advocate specific forms of terrorism during the investigation of a terrorist offence—would one be likely to go somewhere else where the restraints are as tight, as vague and as extensive as are parts of this Terrorism Bill?
	We could destroy our finest institutions if we do not manage to frame this legislation much more tightly, much more specifically and much more closely in ways that would make charges actually stand up.
	There is one other feature that I want to mention, which I believe to be very serious. Clause 2, as the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegie of Lour, indicated, shifts the balance of proof entirely from the traditional right of someone to be considered innocent until proved guilty. It turns that around by 180 degrees. Guilt is established unless the defendant can show that he or she is not guilty. For a librarian or a lecturer in a university, the defence conditions are virtually impossible to meet. That again is a reflection of serious legal opinion that these defences would be virtually useless in an individual case.
	I beg noble Lords that, in the interests of putting on the statute book a law which is robust, which is clear, which means what its says, and which both protects our liberties and isolates terrorists in a way that makes our actions against them effective, it is crucial that the House of Lords undertakes the scrutiny, examination and careful inspection that is its birthright and that, with great respect, even, I think, the Prime Minister, despite his unwise threats to us, should surely understand.

Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, I wholeheartedly support the proposed maximum of 90 days' detention, given that, as has been said, it is to be reviewed weekly by judicial process. Terrorists have become infinitely more sophisticated, and it is simply not practical to expect the police and the relevant specialists to act in so short a time as at present proposed. Much of the evidence, including computers, can be gathered only after the arrest and must be analysed and decrypted. To quote the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, from whom we shall hear later, translations of some of the manuscript material will be,
	"in languages for which quality interpretative services are at a premium".
	He too supports the 90 day proposal for many other equally cogent reasons. We are not talking about more time for the police to interview suspects—some of whom may simply exercise their right to silence anyway—but to analyse and identify evidence to which the police will have access only after the arrest.
	It is, incidentally, unrealistic to argue that the police should build up their case through surveillance. As I remember, it takes 30 people—three shifts of ten—to provide complete coverage of a targeted suspect. If and when those suspects come from a particular community, the surveillance team has to be able to blend into the neighbourhood and into their daily lives. We should think of that as a need that is not easy to satisfy. The police and security services are therefore likely to be dependent on evidential material which becomes available only after arrest. To quote the noble Lord, Lord Carlile—I am sorry that I am doing it once more—
	"significant conspiracies to commit terrorist acts have gone unprosecuted as a result of the time limitations placed on the control authorities following arrest",
	and they have sometimes been forced to pre-empt a known threat by such an arrest. They need the time to analyse the often voluminous evidence rather than to pursue prolonged interrogation. I cannot see how that can put the detainees under unacceptable pressure. I quote the noble Lord, Lord Desai, speaking in this House on 10 March:
	"How many deaths would noble Lords balance against the incarceration of one or two innocent people before they changed their minds?"
	He went on,
	"I respect those who say 'I would lose x amount of lives for the protection of one person's liberty'".—[Official Report, 10/3/05; col. 1005.]
	But he doubted whether such certainty could be right.
	My second point concerns the issue of glorification, and the double standards which the Government continue to apply in the context of terrorism in Northern Ireland. This Terrorism Bill is, however, to cover the whole United Kingdom. The Government are therefore, I hope, committed to applying this legislation to the IRA, which daily glorifies its past actions and is still recruiting the young. The Prime Minister has rightly said that glorifying terrorism abroad would equally be an offence. I hope that Clause 17 will catch those IRA supporters who have fled to the US and have been aiding, abetting, funding and procuring arms for the IRA, as well as catching the new breed of Islamic terrorists.
	Under the legislation for the disappeared, which produced a pitiful three bodies, Her Majesty's Government allowed the IRA to describe their murders as executions. HMG now intend, after praising the IRA for renouncing its arms—after seven years of false promises—to allow known murderers who fled the country before 1998 to escape justice and to return. After that, there is to be a form of judicial process, but these people will not even be required to attend the court, and they will then be free on licence. The Government say that it is not an amnesty but that is what it looks like to the victims of their murderous hate. How is that to be made to square with the Bill? Is this Terrorism Bill for the whole of the UK or not?
	I believe that, as well as prosecuting those who glorify murder, we should be ending the culture of respect for them which now obtains. It is not right that we should be failing to understand the aversion which all decent people, including their own communities, feel for those who murder and claim that it is in the name of a religion or a political cause. The Independent Monitoring Commission in Northern Ireland has always argued that it is wrong to give any respect to those who reject the rule of law, as Sinn Fein/IRA repeatedly does and as the new breed of terrorists in this country do. We should apply the maxim generally.
	Whichever community our new terrorists come from, those communities will be glad to be able to demonstrate that they, too, disown the violence done, in some cases, in the name of their religion or sect. It is not acceptable that, as in the case of Sinn Fein/IRA, its leaders should be allowed repeatedly to refuse to recognise British justice or to allow men accused of crimes in their community to come to court, as in the McCartney case in Northern Ireland, with impunity. It is equally reprehensible for an apparently respectable senior member of the Muslim community to say that in any conflict between duty as a British citizen to respect the law and duty to a putative Islamic world state, loyalty to the latter should come first.
	As the Prime Minister has also said, one basic liberty is the right to life of our citizens and freedom from terrorism. I am sure that those whom the IRA paramilitaries have exiled—and whose right to return to their community Martin McGuinness does not recognise—would agree. I hope that Clause 1 will bring in much needed justice, including, since it covers the past, retrospective justice for Omagh, for the McCartney family and for the families and of the disappeared.
	The Prime Minister said of this latest terrorist activity in July that it is,
	"of a wholly different order from anything we have faced before in this country".
	We saw, he says, that these people were prepared to kill more than 50 innocent people—it could have been 500—and to rejoice in that. Where was he when the IRA bombed Brighton, Birmingham, Guildford and Canary Wharf? It is, however, reassuring that this new breed of terrorists is to be treated with rigour, and that we should not allow mistaken respect for their point of view to cloud our judgment.

Lord Morris of Aberavon: My Lords, this Terrorism Bill is the Government's fourth counter-terrorism Bill in five years. I start off from the premise that, if the need is there, it has my support. But measures, in the absence of a consensus, can run into difficulty, as this Bill has.
	The overwhelming need is to preserve the balance between the liberty of the subject and the need for the rest of us not only to have our liberties but our lives preserved. I am sure that this would be the approach of the families of the victims of the July bombings.
	The duty of balancing is for us in Parliament. There are two controversial parts of the Bill: first, the period of detention without charge; and, secondly, the revised offence of glorifying terrorism. Despite the way the first has been handled, and I pity the Home Secretary who has sought to take the blame, I was inclined to support the Government in their proposal to detain without charge for up to 90 days, provided they could get over the objections of Article 5 of the Human Rights Act. Perhaps I may say in passing that encouraging chief constables to campaign for the 90 days is not the right way of doing things. My local chief constable is reported as saying "It would not be appropriate". A line must be drawn between what is right and what is not right, and sometimes that is difficult without a written constitution. I suspect that many would agree that reproducing letters drafted by the Home Secretary must cause just a little raising of an eyebrow.
	I bear in mind the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. Although I reached the conclusion that the case for the desired 90 days was not proved, I was prepared to give the Government the benefit of the doubt, particularly as there is now weekly supervision after 14 days by a High Court judge and the sunset clause. I fear that the 28 days passed by the other place is too short for a few important cases. In an age of international terrorism—with the tentacles of crime extending well beyond our shores, different jurisdictions, the problems of translation and of computer networks, the multiplicity of SIM cards for mobiles phones running into hundreds and many names for the same person—the case for extending the period of detention without charge is formidable.
	One factor has fortified my views more than anything is that, following surveillance, the need for a much earlier arrest than before, if the wrongdoer is to be stopped in his tracks before he causes mayhem, is imperative. If he slips the gathering noose before enough evidence to charge him is available, it could be too late and the deed would have been done. The extra time may be needed to fill out the gaps in the evidence. It is not the case of a simple murder that is being investigated. There is no magic in the figure of 90—90 days is unproven, as a figure. It could be 42, 60 or even 90. I believe that there should be more than 28 days in those few important cases. Why we cannot have a code of practice, with proper safeguards for allowing wider questioning after charge than the present arrangements, baffles me.
	Neither do I accept the Government's stance against the use of intercept evidence in court. I understand that the United Kingdom is the only country, other than Ireland, to have an absolute prohibition in place. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, has given his views in the strongest of terms.
	The Joint Committee on Human Rights has given its support, subject to safeguards. Public interest decisions on evidence are taken every day in our criminal courts by our judges, even by a mere recorder, as I was for 20 years or more. They have to consider the position, and, if they hold against the Crown, then the Crown has to consider its own position. Why should there be a blanket position in the world that we are now living in?
	I now come to the new offence of glorifying the commission of acts of terrorism, past, present or future, which other people may understand as direct or indirect encouragement to similar acts. A judge will have to direct the jury as to the ingredients of this offence. There is no time for me to set out before this House the kind of direction that I had prepared, but I believe that a jury will not find it all that easy—I refer to the test of recklessness and the problems of indirect incitement. The only comfort I draw is that in the original draft Bill there were other options of "celebrating" or "exalting", whatever that may mean, terrorism. In Clause 20(2) the definition of "glorification" includes,
	"any form of praise or celebration, and cognate expressions".
	What a catch-all definition! Example after example has been given in another place of conduct that might be considered questionable, from Mandela to Palestine and, nearer home, Ireland. What are we likely to achieve, in the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, again,
	"by creating a criminal offence out of something that is just too vague and uncertain"?
	I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, that certainty is a fundamental requirement of our criminal law.
	Incitement to commit terrorism is already covered by a range of criminal offences. What is the need for a fresh offence, so poorly drafted and, on the floor of the court, not all that easy to prove? That is my view, having spent most of my life in the criminal courts.
	Why have those one or two who now preach hate not been arrested by the existing law? I know there are difficulties of collecting evidence, but do the authors of this Bill believe that it is more likely to prosecute under these new provisions?
	A junior Minister in the other place said that she had been asked to speculate on what kind of phrase might make people fall foul of the new provision. The only example she could give, "comfortably" she said, was where someone said:
	"'Wasn't it a fantastic thing that happened on 7 July',"—[Official Report, Commons, 9/11/05; col. 392.]
	knowing that the likely effect would be to encourage their audience in acts of terrorism. Really, is this the best that can be said on behalf of the Bill? Would members of any congregation rush out and plan acts of terrorism on that basis? Most English juries I have known, in a long life, are more hard-bitten than that.
	If the existing law is not strong enough to encompass the worse and most obvious acts of encouragement, I suggest to the Government that they should go back to the drawing board. I would then listen carefully to what the need is, and what more appropriate proposals to deal with them were before us.
	At the moment, I am certainly not with the Government on this issue. The Minister said in another place that we must have "practical, effective and workable legislation"—this clause is not.

Baroness Cox: My Lords, in general I welcome the Bill's measures to contain terrorism. My concern is whether it is too late, and perhaps even too limited. For example, as long ago as August 1999, a film on Channel 4 showed two leading Islamists, Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammed and Abu Hamza al-Masri lecturing to a large crowd in Friends' Meeting House in London. They proclaim that they do not believe in the law of this land but only in the law of Allah, and describe how they will kill us "kaffirs". Then, more seriously, they teach terrorist tactics, such as how to put up anti-aircraft nets with balloons and explosives, and how to bring down aircraft coming into London airports. An explosives expert is asked whether this is feasible, and his answer is yes. Those two militant leaders emphasise that that is only one example and urge every man present in the hall to go away and devise a similar terrorist tactic himself because it is jihad in this country—kill or be killed.
	That was long before 9/11. How many young men and women have since been inspired by those two leaders to develop terrorist tactics to use in this country when the time is ripe? How many have gone abroad to learn the militaristic tactics of jihad in jihads elsewhere? Why did it take so long for Abu Hamza and Sheikh Bakri Muhammed to be contained and why were they allowed to continue teaching terrorism in this country for so many years?
	I reluctantly return to an issue that I have repeatedly raised, but to which I have had no satisfactory answer from the Government or the relevant authorities. On 12 January 2000 I was speaking in your Lordships' House about that film and about the teaching of terrorist activities in this country when unprecedented interference to the microphones drowned my voice. The interference ceased 10 seconds before the end of my speech. It is entirely compatible with some kind of jamming. I was advised by the authorities here that it was caused by "a faulty microphone", but I have since been advised that a thorough investigation showed no problems with the sound system, leaving as the only plausible explanation that it was intentional interference by someone with inside access.
	I took independent advice from international experts whose analysis I am willing to make available. They robustly disagreed with the replies that I had been given. They claimed that the only technically feasible and statistically reasonable explanation was that it was an inside job. They pointed out that such jamming is easy to achieve and that it demonstrates the ability to penetrate the security of Parliament, shows contempt for democracy, was a specific threat to me, and a general threat to anyone who dares to speak critically about Islamists.
	Having failed to elicit any serious response from authorities here, my concern was renewed by a newspaper report in the Sunday Times on 30 July 2000 entitled:
	"Commons Security Firm Run By Terror Suspect".
	Some excerpts are relevant, such as:
	"A Sudanese businessman who has been linked by the American CIA to the world's most wanted terrorist is the leading shareholder in a company that provides security systems to the House of Parliament . . . Salah Idris, 48, whose pharmaceutical factory in Sudan was flattened by American cruise missiles after it was linked to Osama Bin Laden . . . owns 25 per cent of IES, a company specialising in high-technology surveillance and security management".
	The article claims that that firm also provided such equipment to New Scotland Yard, British Airways, Texaco and other blue chip firms.
	I cannot comment on the allegations that Salah Idris has links with terrorism, but his ownership of the pharmaceutical factory demonstrates his close relationship with the Islamist regime in Khartoum.
	When Parliament resumed, I tabled a Written Question. The reply on 9 October 2000 confirmed Salah Idris's involvement in that firm. It admitted that the firm also installed surveillance equipment in the Royal Courts of Justice and provided digital playback systems for New Scotland Yard, but that Salah Idris had no day-to-day involvement in running the firm.
	I put the matter, if not my mind, to rest until, after the horrors of 9/11, a journalist informed me that Salah Idris had increased his shareholding to 75 per cent. An article in the Observer on 14 October 2001 confirmed that and quotes the marketing manager of IES saying:
	"We provide security for some of the most sensitive sites in the UK, right up to government Ministers and the Army".
	A subsequent article in the Observer on 4 November 2001 revealed that Salah Idris also held a 20 per cent stake in the security firm Protec. The article states:
	"Salah Idris . . . has multi-million pound investments in two British security firms through a secretive offshore company. These firms act as security consultants and supply security systems at 11 nuclear installations in the UK, including Dounreay and Sellafield. They also have security contracts with some of Britain's top potential terrorist targets, including Canary Wharf, the House of Commons and Army bases. The companies would have highly sensitive details of all the facilities where they install equipment".
	I shall repeat the two questions that I have asked before, for which for four years I have received no satisfactory answer. They are germane to the Bill and to its wider implications. First, does either existing or proposed legislation provide protection against financial penetration of and influence in UK institutions of key political military and strategic significance?
	Secondly, as Oliver Letwin in another place asked when he was shadow Home Secretary:
	"In the current climate, people will be rightly concerned about the Observer's allegations, which raise very serious questions. They require an urgent response. Either the Government cleared Mr Idris of any wrongdoing, or they should launch an immediate investigation".
	Before concluding, I point to similar concerns demonstrated by Dr Rachel Ehrenfeld, expert on financial institutions and director of the American Center for Democracy, and her analysis of an American security firm, Ptech. That firm develops enterprise blueprints at the highest level of US Government and corporate infrastructure, which hold every important functional, operational and technical detail of the enterprise. Ptech's clients in 2001 included the US Department of Justice, the Department of Energy, Customs, Air Force, the White House, IBM, Sysco, Motorola and many others.
	She claims that examples of information gathered by using Ptech's capabilities would include: a complete blueprint of a nuclear waste disposal site; the security procedures required to access military bases during transfer of nuclear waste materials; details of security rules and procedures; and specifications for Smartcards as implemented in various defence facilities, which could be used to make templates for unauthorised production of fake Smart IDs for potential use by terrorists.
	Ptech's Middle East branch, called Horizons, received projects directly from Ptech and is used to outsource projects for Ptech's clients. They include the Saudi Bin Laden Company and the Afghan-based BTC—Bin Laden Telecom. Among Ptech's top investors and management in 2001 was Yassin al-Qadi who was listed as a specially designated global terrorist on 12 October 2001.
	Rachel Ehrenfeld continues with a long list, and concludes, as do I, with a question. She asks:
	"How could a small, Saudi-based company with questionable terrorist connections obtain significant government and business contracts . . . even more importantly, are there other Ptechs around?".
	I do not comment on Rachel Ehrenfeld's disturbing analysis, but I echo her questions. Does the Bill ensure that terrorists are not using their money to buy into our national infrastructure to undermine our economy and security from within? Does it adequately provide measures to prevent such infiltration? I hope that the Minister will answer those questions and provide assurances on those serious issues.

Lord Soley: My Lords, it may be something of an understatement to describe the previous speech as intriguing, but I shall leave it to the Minister as I do not have an answer to those questions.
	For many years I have not been alone in struggling with the difficult question of how to confront and defeat terrorism, while at the same time defend our civil liberties and protect the rights of minorities who get caught in the net and become easy recruits for terrorism, wherever it may be. I am not alone in having been through that, and all of us from time to time have adjusted our positions.
	An important message to give to people outside is that the Bill is not internment, which locked up thousands of people without a release date being set, judicial input, or the police or security services having to record the interviews either by audio or visual means. Exactly the same applies to the Prevention of Terrorism Act as it was in the 1980s and early 1990s. Then, up to 6,000 people a year were being detained for seven days without access even to a solicitor, never mind a judge, and were being held without access to the audio or visual tapes that are now kept by the police. Incidentally, that is where some of the wrongful convictions to which the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, referred came from. Indeed, one of them was of a person known to me in the Guildford case when I was a probation officer. She was held under that provision and released. The fascinating thing about her was that she was held for seven days without access to a solicitor. At the beginning of those seven days, she was denying that she had committed the offence; at the end, she was admitting it. That is not because she was brutally treated; as she would concede and has said since, she was a confused and mixed-up young girl on drugs and was therefore easily caught in that sort of net.
	The other thing that it is important to understand is that we began to get more sophisticated in our handling of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, in particular, but also internment. I was never in my career the chairman of the 1922 Committee, so I cannot be too sure of my facts here, but I suspect that both the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, who will speak next and, possibly, the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, knew that the numbers that we were pulling in under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and internment were providing easy recruits for the paramilitaries. At its height, the use of exclusion orders under the Prevention of Terrorism Act totalled about 250 people a year excluded from one part of the United Kingdom to another. In my view, later supported by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, in his report on the Prevention of Terrorism Act, that constituted internal exile—something that we had not had since the days of Henry VIII.
	So we must watch our language: things have changed dramatically for the better. That is why many of us have been able to consider things differently now. I am sad to have to say this, but I say to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that he is very unwise to have adduced the position of the Liberal Party, because throughout the 1980s, when the party wanted to position itself to the Right of the Labour Party politically, it supported both those Acts without any of the safeguards that we now have. Now that, for what I regard as rather daft political reasons, the party wants to position itself to the Left of us, they are opposed to the Bill. That is a classic case of what people expect in this country: the Tory Party to drive on the Right, the Labour Party to drive on the Left and the Liberals again saying that it is entirely an optional matter which side of the road to drive on, it depends on the weather. That is not a very sensible stance.
	As the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, for whose comments I shall wait with some interest, said, and in my view thanks to the final few years of the Conservative Government under John Major and to the present Government, Britain now has more protection for defendants than most other countries. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, that the United States is about the worst model that we can follow. At present, the United States tries to catch people outside its jurisdiction and hold them out there. That is unacceptable.

Lord Soley: My Lords, I understand that, but some of the people whom it is trying to hold outside are people whom it thinks are disseminating information, so the matter is not as clear-cut as it seems. However, I understand and accept the point that the noble Baroness makes.
	For rather different reasons than have been given by others in this debate, I agree that the issue of glorification is difficult. I think that most of us know the intense feeling about some statements made by some people in one particular mosque in north London. That provokes people massively, to the extent that two mosques in my constituency when I was still a Member of the Commons also complained bitterly about what was being said in that mosque and wanted action taken against it, even before the terrorist attacks.
	The danger in addressing that is the Government have drawn up this glorification provision, which will not be used very much. As I think that my noble friend Lady Scotland will tell us when she replies, prosecution depends on either the Director of Public Prosecutions or the Attorney-General or both deciding to go ahead. So the chance of a librarian being charged under that is very slight. The danger is that we will not use the provision and people will still feel that things are being said outside that are unacceptable and unforgivable. Another part of me feels that I would rather have those people out in the open where I can see them. I rather suspect that the security services might. As the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, said, they are often just loud mouths, but those who go to listen to them may be a bit more involved, so it can be useful to know them. I also want to address the issue of 28 days briefly but in a wider context because I suspect that we now have the worst of all worlds—again, I shall listen to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, with interest. It is probably true to say that 28 days is not enough if we are to go down that road. In seven days, a person will often have confessed. If they have not confessed in seven to 10 days, they are unlikely to. The reason for a longer period is not so much about questioning as about searching computer databases and, above all, obtaining information from overseas. I end with this final suggestion to the Government. I do not think that we can solve the problem in one fell swoop, we must keep working at it.
	I think that the time has come to recognise that what we started with control orders in this country and now with the Bill is to take a significant step down the road used in several European countries of holding people while investigating under the investigating magistrate system. In the Bill and with control orders, we put a judge in charge—which is absolutely right—who is then to question people on a weekly basis to ask how the process is going and whether we still need to hold a person. He can hear the person in their own defence. That is not dissimilar to what is done in continental Europe. I do not recommend that we go down the French road, where they hold people for up to four years. That is appalling. But there may be a way forward here in the longer term—not in the Bill, I accept—by recognising that we have adopted part of the continental system for this narrow area of terrorism and adapted it to our needs. I am not sure that, in the long run, it would not be better if we tried to reach a balance and recognise that we are doing that and that we do so only for terrorism and no other offence. I do not suggest the importation of continental law into Britain, but the case for doing that for terrorism is very strong.
	Sadly, we will not be able to leave these debates behind us for some years yet, I suspect, but it is important that we never give up focusing on the difficult balance between the three aspects of civil liberties, the rights of minorities and the need to defeat terrorism. If we get those right, I suggest that we start to consider in a more strategic, long-term way bringing an aspect of continental law into our law in a way that is unique to this country—and we are quite good at that—to get over some of the hurdles that we have all faced in the past.

Lord Mayhew of Twysden: My Lords, if he will forgive me, I shall not follow the noble Lord, Lord Soley, in his examination of respective party attitudes toward the problem of dealing with terrorism in a free society. That is, in part, because we are where we are. It is a very unpleasant place and a new one in which to find ourselves. Everyone who had spoken in this debate has recognised that we face a new situation today. For example, never in Northern Ireland did we have to face the circumstance of someone not only prepared but determined to blow himself up, with all the consequences of that for making it difficult to keep someone under surveillance and for people to protect the public. Those are too well known for me to need to recite them again now.
	So of course the Government are absolutely entitled—indeed, it is their duty—to review their legislative array, our legislative array, to see how best they can ensure, among other things, that people are kept safe. That is the first duty of any government.
	It is of course right—as a number of your Lordships have made clear—that the rights of victims and potential victims need to be supported just as much as the rights of those who are suspects and who are subject to criminal justice procedures.
	The excellent debates in the other place and those that we have had so far in this House, have focused naturally upon the balance that has to be struck. We know what that balance is: the balance between preserving liberties long fought for and the right on the other hand to take all practical steps to protect people. If there is any common ground that has come out of the debates—both here and in the other place—it is this: that while this is no time to be "tenderly fastidious", it is also no time to succumb to tunnel vision, seeing only one side of the argument and not both.
	I hope to touch upon four issues which can be sensibly tested against that formulation. The first is the question of detention without charge—the 90 days issue; the second is encouragement of terrorism; the third is the extra-territorial jurisdiction that this Bill gives to us; and the fourth, if I have time, is the question of attendance at a place of terrorist training for which, according to Clause 8, no defence at all is afforded.
	With regard to the 90 days issue I agree entirely with what was said by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon. That speech will repay careful reading in Hansard—it reflected very fairly the painful and contrasting considerations that fall to all of us in dealing with this matter. I would not have ruled out 40 days had there been an absolutely compelling case made clearly and with particularity by the police.
	I joined other Members of your Lordships' House and of the other place at a meeting in Portcullis House addressed by Mr Hayman with the utmost frankness and in a manner inspiring the utmost confidence in his integrity. But I did not come away from that meeting with the feeling that 90 days had been calculated as being a period vital to the protection of our fellow countrymen. It was obviously his first and best preference but no more than that. I would need to be more persuaded than I am of the case for 90 days. I find myself in the same position as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, in that regard. Equally I would not need much persuasion to hold that more than 28 days was legitimate in these circumstances and I do not think that would be to be tenderly fastidious.
	As to encouragement, there remains in the Bill—which although is much improved—something which in this context savours a tunnel vision. That is the scope of the offence of encouragement of terrorism which is as the head of the Bill, in Clause 1. This offence is copiously drafted in no fewer than 64 lines of text and it attracts imprisonment of up to seven years. Yet as drafted, there can be a conviction without any proof of a culpable mental element having been present. This was touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford.
	I have no quarrel at all with the provision that it can be committed if the defendant is "reckless", provided that that word is properly understood—the definition can be found in Clause 1(2). It is the subsequent definition in Clause 1(3) of what is reckless that does the mischief. It adopts the test that was recently and specifically disapproved unanimously by the Judicial Committee of your Lordships' House in the case of Regina v G in 2004—a case concerning the Criminal Damage Act 1971. What appears in this Bill is not the subjective test of a defendant's state of mind which simple fairness surely requires for any serious offence carrying out a substantial period of imprisonment as a possibility before he is found to have been reckless, but instead the test is objective—importing the concept of what he could not reasonably have failed to be aware. I would respectfully suggest that that goes plum against most people's ideas of fairness.
	As such it offends—as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham, a senior Law Lord pointed out—against the salutary principle,
	"that conviction of serious crime should depend on proof that . . . [the defendant's] state of mind when . . . acting was culpable".
	Clause 1(3) fails that test.
	The third issue is extra-territoriality—that is the extra-territorial scope of many of the offences created by the Bill. It has been said that a lack of distinction between committing a terrorist act against some tyrannical regime and doing it against a democracy will be fine. It is all going to be all right because the prosecution must be consented to by the DPP and he cannot do that unless he is permitted to do so by the Attorney-General. That is to bring the Attorney-General very dangerously into a strongly controversial political field. He is of course the guardian of the public interest in our constitutional arrangements, but that is not part of his job and if he is required to do it, it will make what is properly his job much more difficult to do.
	Lastly, for attendance at a place of terrorist training, there is no defence. It is ridiculous, in my respectful submission, if there is no defence for an act that has a 10-year custodial sentence attached to it. Under the Bill, if someone is there he is guilty. But what about, for example, the investigative journalist?
	There is a great deal to applaud in this Bill and it has been applauded very widely. But there is much to be improved and I look forward to a constructive Committee stage in your Lordships' House.

Lord Parekh: My Lords, in the light of the July attacks in London and the knowledge that we have acquired about terrorist methods and networks, a Bill such as this is needed and I have no general difficulty with it. But I do have four sources of unease and I should like to spend the next five or so minutes articulating them.
	I have some difficulty with the whole idea of detention without charge for 28 days or more. This kind of detention could traumatise the individuals involved and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, pointed out, it could lead to an enormous amount of injury and psychological damage to the individuals involved. It could also lead to false confessions and to unreliable convictions, as we have known in several cases in the past. There is also the danger that this part of the Bill might be seen as directed at or against Muslims and might therefore alienate them and make intelligence gathering that much more difficult. On this question of intelligence gathering, there is one point that we might need to bear in mind. There is a lot of talk about training a large number of Muslim informants who would act as a source of reliable information about what is going on within the community. I hope that we will tread that path very carefully because, if we are not careful, we could easily create deep areas of discontent and incoherence within the community and even promote violence between Muslims.
	If we do decide to go ahead with 28 days of detention without charge, then I hope that we will bear at least the following points in mind: the conditions under which people are detained; the methods of interrogation that are employed; the right of appeal and even compensation in cases where the detention turns out to be utterly unjustified; regular and close judicial scrutiny; and, what is just as important, periodic review of how this policy is working out.
	The second difficulty I have with the Bill is with this whole idea of glorification. Whenever it is defined within the Bill, it talks in terms of praising terrorism, celebrating terrorism, inducement or incitement to terrorist attacks or encouraging others to emulate. These are only four or five words in terms of which the idea of glorification is defined.
	It is too wide and too vague.
	Hardly anyone in your Lordships' House has pointed out that we have precisely this legislation in the Indian penal code. While sati was abolished a long time ago, in the mid-1980s there was an act of sati; lots of women in India got terribly worked up and the Government had to give in to pressure—the kind of thing our Government are doing now—and do something. They enacted a law against the glorification of sati. That was about 18 years ago, and not a single prosecution has taken place. In one case, when a prosecution was mounted, no conviction was secured because the case was easily shot down on questions such as what was glorification and whether the utterances by a particular individual amounted to glorification. So if there is any lesson to learn from India, that is it.
	I am not sure what it means to talk about praising, celebrating, or inducing people to engage in terrorist attacks. If I were to argue that, in certain situations, the use of violence, even terrorist violence, was justified, now or in the past, could I be said to have induced anyone to engage in similar acts in the present? What am I to do if my listener or my reading public were to draw that kind of conclusion from what I have written?
	This is not just a hypothetical example. About two years ago, I delivered a lecture at Harvard University on a very technical philosophical question; namely, what are the limits of rational debate and at what point in time may I be able to tell someone, "There is no possibility of arguing with you"? At what point does such a dialogue break down? As an experiment, I imagined a dialogue between Osama bin Laden and Mahatma Gandhi. This article was published a few weeks later in Prospect. I was told that the publishers, who eventually published it in the Harvard University collection, were deeply uneasy just in case it got me into trouble, and even when it appeared in Prospect, I was told that if I were to go to the United States—and I go often, when I am invited to give lectures—I might be detained at the airport.
	I have a feeling that the Bill would catch that kind of article. In order to make my argument philosophically as convincing as possible, I tried to make Osama bin Laden a better philosopher than he is, trying to marshal arguments in his favour which the man would never have dreamt of making. Of course, I made Gandhi just as strong, refuting every point that Osama bin Laden was making. But my conclusion was that in matters of moral absolutes, no compromise, no rational resolution of disagreement, is possible. I am afraid that if I were to write more of this kind of article, I might get into more trouble than I seem to have done.
	I have a similar difficulty with Clause 2 which refers to handling, distributing or circulating terrorist material. I do that all the time. As a university professor, whose job it is to teach all kinds of things, including the possibility of justification of terrorist violence, I recommend books by Bakunin, Kropotkin and Nachaev—all kinds of anarchists—who all gloried in terrorism, sometimes mindlessly. Am I to be told that for duplicating these articles or books and circulating them to my students, I will be hauled up before Her Majesty's court and told that I am guilty of "handling"—whatever that may mean in an academic context—material of this kind? We need to be extremely careful.
	When I teach courses on theories of violence and of revolution in history, or whether the concept of innocence makes sense in a political context, because that is important to a definition of terrorism, I might be told that they would not be caught by the Bill because all the Bill intends to stop is incitement to terrorist attacks, and this is not what I am doing. But I do not understand "incitement" in this context. What I do when I teach is to help my students understand that in certain situations, terrorist violence might be condoned and even justified. In other words, the dividing line between inciting and condoning terrorism is pretty thin, and I do not think that the Bill quite captures it. Those are the three specific points I wanted to make. They concern me very deeply, both as someone from within an ethnic minority but, more importantly, as a philosopher whose job it is, as Socrates said, to act as a sting fly, making people think.
	I have a larger point, on which I should like to end. Terrorism is certainly a security question, but it is not only that—it is also a moral and political question. We need to address why people are drawn to it. No one wants to die and, contrary to what some of your Lordships said earlier, even those seeking martyrdom want to reassure themselves that that is consistent with the central principles of their religion. In fact, when the first suicide bombers appeared in Lebanon in the early 1980s, there was an intense amount of debate among Muslim theologians about whether that was acceptable in the context of the Koran. Only a few years later, a view was reached in certain circles that it was an okay thing to do. We need to ask why people were persuaded to read their religion in this way and what cultural and political factors precipitated that reading.
	We might also ask ourselves why Britain has not been subjected to an Islamic terrorist threat until recently and why it has come under it only now. For all these reasons, I suggest that while addressing the question of terrorism as robustly as we have done, we also need to look at the larger factors. The battle against terrorism cannot be fought within our country alone; it is a worldwide phenomenon and will not disappear in a few days or a year—it will come up again and again. Political wisdom requires that we should be thinking about long-term factors in our country, about our relations with the Muslim world and about the larger sense of grievance that Muslim societies seem to have. If we can apply our minds to creating a sensible kind of world order, that might in the end be a better way of addressing terrorism.

Lord Carlile of Berriew: My Lords, I am sure the whole House will join with me in expressing pleasure that the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, did not follow the tendency of Mr Galloway to hand himself over to the American authorities. Had he done so, we might have been deprived of the fascinating and entertaining speech that we have just heard.
	It may be for the assistance of the House if I make a few remarks from my bird's-eye view as independent reviewer of certain aspects of counter-terrorism legislation. I take it that the House will accept that it is not an abuse of my position as a Member of this House to speak at Second Reading. I have concluded, however, that it would be inappropriate for me to speak in Committee, and I have decided that it would not be appropriate for me to vote in any Divisions.
	In the past few weeks, I have been cited, I think, on every side of every argument in relation to these matters. When the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, spoke of sati, it immediately put me in mind of my childhood reading and my fascination with fakirs, who lay on beds of nails. I have learnt in recent weeks what that felt like—a sort of exquisite discomfort.
	It is perhaps worth re-emphasising a fundamental point founded on—and I use the word in its broadest sense—evidence that I have heard, seen and found from conversations with those operationally involved in counter-terrorism activity and from my own observation. There is a real and present threat of continuing al-Qaeda-connected terrorism within the United Kingdom. One of the problems is that we do not know exactly what al-Qaeda is. It is a loose co-fraternity of mutually sympathetic groups. That is the most that can be said with clear definition. The threat that it poses is unpredictable in its size, range and scope. It applies to all citizens, wherever they may congregate in significant numbers. It applies equally to Members of this House and another place in this building and to children on buses on the way to school in any town or village in the United Kingdom.
	The appearance of suicide bombers in our midst, shocking but not at all surprising given the history of recent years, has raised the stakes. It is right, as a number of noble Lords have said, that the first duty of any government must be to protect the public and keep them safe. However, it is important to recognise that reaction is dangerous, that reaction must be measured, and that reaction must be intellectually defensible at all times. What we do in response to that kind of terrorism must be proportional and must not be exaggerated. As a number of your Lordships have said, we must give paramountcy to continuing solid community relations. To alienate any part of our pretty well integrated community, compared with some other European countries, is to expose ourselves to danger.
	Another paramount matter is to ensure that we enact laws that are needed, not unnecessary, that are enduring, not temporary, and that are fair, not arbitrary. Had there been a scrutiny committee, as was originally envisaged by the Government—I would have favoured a scrutiny committee having chaired another one for a period of months recently—evidence before such a committee would have demonstrated something I have observed. I sometimes think we spend too much time wringing our hands rather than looking at how clean our hands are.
	I say that in this context: evidence before such a committee would have included something I have been doing in recent months. I have been comparing the civil liberties protections offered in all parts of the United Kingdom with those offered in other countries in the Council of Europe and in the United States of America. I have looked in particular at the United States of America, at France and at Spain. I would say, without exaggerating, that we have a very reasonable quality of civil liberties protection in this country. The noble Lord, Lord Soley, has spoken accurately about some of the things that occur in the French jurisdiction, which we would not tolerate here; for example, up to four days of interviewing by the police, with no tape recording and with no lawyer present. That was described to me by a senior person in France in the past three weeks, unsurprisingly, as a "very productive period of questioning".
	Those of us who remember the pre-PACE days are not at all surprised by that. I am therefore far from satisfied that other countries' systems—which we sometimes praise from a position of relative ignorance—protect their civil liberties any more than ours. I suspect they protect them less. I am far from satisfied that some of the European systems do more than merely shoehorn them into basic European Convention on Human Rights compatibility, but actually involve far longer periods of detention than ever occur anywhere in the United Kingdom, or were ever envisaged remotely by this Bill in its original form. That, I believe, is a realistic assessment of the comparative evidence.
	I remain satisfied, as I said in my report published on 12 October, that in a very small number of the most important cases a longer period of arrest prior to charging would ensure proper investigation, charging with the right offences-not some kind of holding offence to justify keeping people in custody—or not charging at all. I believe that if we followed those principles, we would ensure a logical outcome. The reasons I set out in paragraphs 56 to 61 of my report, published on 12 October. If any noble Lords want to read them they can get it from the Printed Paper Office. However, it is extremely important to retain a fair system of law and protection of personal liberty consistent with paragraphs 224 to 227 of the report of the Newton committee, raised earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. I have advocated an elaborate and fairly complex system of introduction of an investigative judge. I regret that the Government have felt that this is not, for present purposes, the time to go down that road, though my understanding is that the Government are reasonably well disposed to looking at such a system. If such a system were introduced, along the lines of the template suggested by the Newton committee and in my recent report, then we would be considering the important issue—how we get the balance—and not merely conducting a Dutch auction on the number of days, which, in my view, has not distinguished the political process.
	Twenty-eight days offers an improvement, although a modest one, in terms of public safety. I am doubtful about the additional protections for individual freedoms offered by the Bill as amended. I am not sure it is a sensible use of High Court judges. I shall, of course, review what emerges from this Bill. I hope that time will confirm the democratic wisdom of another place. There will be an opportunity to debate other details of the Bill.
	I just want to raise two concerns, concerns which have already been raised by other speakers in this debate. I have sat in Professor Paul Wilkinson's interesting attic office in the University of St Andrew's Centre for the Study of Terrorism. I do not want to shop Professor Wilkinson and have him arrested by the local constabulary, but my reading of the provisions at the moment are that he might well be committing a criminal offence under this Bill by being the greatest non-lawyer expert in this country—and that is praise, rather than criticism—on terrorist organisations around the world. My noble friend Lady Williams made a powerful case on behalf of the British Library, but I believe there is an equally powerful case to be made on behalf of academics—not just the great ones but the good ones too—and also on behalf of people such as Members of another place, who take a real interest in these matters and have research for them.
	I want to raise specifically what I call the John Simpson point. I have seen people such as John Simpson—is he now the Diplomatic Editor of the BBC?—go to terrorist training camps and report, in my view in the public interest, on what these camps do , why they exist, and draw the matter to public attention. Under Clause 8, he would be committing an offence. I cannot believe that that is the real intention of the Government. I hope that the Government will find a way to introduce an amendment to protect bona fide journalists.
	I have accepted the request that I look at the definition of terrorism. I have been given nearly a year to look at eight lines of text, which sounds more formidable a task than looking at it in a month. However, given that time, I hope, in a period of rather less than a year, to produce something useful. I intend to invite the widest submission of papers and advice. I propose to invite the public to express their views and to contribute, as well as the many known for their specialist interest in this area. I am sure that the whole House would wish this to be an open process, possibly even including public meetings.
	Overall I would urge this House and another place to take a carefully balanced view of the Bill in the context of the real threat. Perhaps the most telling contribution I can make is to ask Members of both Houses to remember that this is not an abstract issue.

Lord Stratford: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has an eminent, albeit difficult, position. But it is not as uncomfortable as that of another prominent Liberal, who was said to be sitting on the fence waiting for the iron to enter his soul.
	This is a Bill everyone wishes was unnecessary. Unfortunately, it is a response to the growing dangers we face in our everyday lives. Whether it is an appropriate response, I want to touch on in a moment. We are very fond of saying we live in a free and democratic society, and in comparison with many countries around the world, that is true and would remain so even if this Bill was many times tougher than it is. However, there is no such thing as absolute freedom, or unrestricted civil and human rights. Indeed, the words "absolute" and "unrestricted" are incompatible with any acceptable notions of freedom and civil and human rights. Freedom and democracy do not mean licence, but neither are they outraged by reasonable levels of control and discipline in society. Put simply, the most important civil right in our society is the right to go about our lawful business, free of fear, intimidation and violence. Unfortunately, we are finding it increasingly difficult to do so, and thus it is inevitable that governments and the apparatus of the state will respond accordingly: CCTV cameras, more police—many of them armed—ID cards and legislation such as we are considering today, are all part and parcel of that response.
	I do not find any of that a great problem, even though I regret the necessity. In my time in another place I called for the routine arming of the police, the deployment of the military to assist the civil authorities, a mandatory national DNA register and a compulsory system of community service for all 16 to 17 year-olds. There was a time when I would have found such an agenda anathema but circumstances have changed and so has my response. Ultimately, collective freedom will always be more important than individual freedom, yet too often we have given far too much emphasis to the latter and not enough to the former. My own somewhat depressing belief is that the level of violence in society will continue to increase and the state will therefore be required to adopt more and more robust measures to deal with it. Perhaps we will eventually have to face up to the uncomfortable fact that the days of liberal individualism are probably numbered.
	I turn from the Bill's context to its content, parts of which still concern me. The first is the problem of providing an adequate definition of terrorism itself. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, is being asked to review the definition. I do not envy him his task and, by the sound of what he has just said, neither does he. We all know that, throughout history, one man's terrorist has often been another man's freedom fighter. In the days of empire, we initially referred to independent leaders such as Nkrumah, Nyerere, Kaunda and Makarios as terrorists, only to end up negotiating with them and welcoming them here on state visits.
	The other major definitional problem in the Bill is that of the so-called "glorification of terrorism". If such an offence had been on the statute book, where would those of us be who supported and advocated on behalf of the ANC when Nelson Mandela was on Robin Island, condemned as a terrorist by the apartheid regime in South Africa? I well remember the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, when she was Prime Minister, describing the ANC as a "terrorist organisation". That upset quite a number of us and we decided to enter the House of Commons Chamber wearing ANC T-shirts. We might have offended the dress code but it did not offend the law at the time. But we all remember the noble Baroness subsequently being one of those welcoming President Mandela when he addressed both Houses in Westminster Hall. There are times—and we know it—when armed struggle is legitimate, particularly when the struggle is against tyrannical regimes and there is no democratic alternative.
	I admit that I would have supported 90 days' pre-charge detention, with reluctance, had I still been a Member of the other House, but I would have done so because I am certainly not prepared to take risks with other people's safety. At least someone held for 90 days remains alive, which is more than we can say for all those who have died as victims of terrorism. However, the decision of the other place to agree to 28 days seems in line with the views of most senior police officers with whom I have discussed the matter in recent days. Nevertheless, it would be very interesting to test the feeling in your Lordships' House if an amendment to restore 90 days were tabled.
	Like others, I deeply regret the necessity for this Bill. I support it but look forward to it being further tightened in Committee. My other deep regret is that I feel absolutely certain that there will be many more Bills like this to follow.

Lord Lyell of Markyate: My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate, not least the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Stratford. I must confess that the noble Lord chilled me somewhat when he said that collective freedom was more important than individual freedom.
	Naturally, we are very shocked by the appearance of suicide bombers in our country, just as the United States was very shocked by the events of 9/11 in 2001, but we are not the first to arrive there. I think that we can profitably learn from the state of Israel, which has lived with suicide bombing for many more years than that. We can learn from the wisdom of its rightly celebrated Chief Justice, Aharon Barak, who, I think, is giving a lecture in this country this month. In his famous judgment in the case known widely, although not correctly, as the "ticking time bomb case", because that was an example of what you could do if there was a ticking time bomb, condemning heavy-handedness by the Israeli security services, he said:
	"Although a democracy must often fight with hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual's liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day, they strengthen its spirit and its strength and allow it to overcome its difficulties".
	I fully understand the Government bringing forward this Bill following the events of 7 July—the day of my maiden speech in this House, for which I was late because of the disruption of the trains, although that was the minimal thing in that absolutely tragic day—but a balance must be struck between adequate powers for the police and security services and the liberty of the subject. Chief Justice Barak's words on that are highly relevant. We should not underestimate the effects on liberty of 90 days' detention, particularly if it will be at all frequent. If you overdo it, you will deeply disillusion those portions of society likely to be affected by it. We know that there is a very serious risk that Muslims in our society are likely to be particularly targeted in this area. It must be said that the vast majority of Muslims in this country are horrified by the perversion of the Koran and of Islam that underlies those horrible criminal acts. They are our best source of intelligence, and I feel confident that our intelligence services will be fully aware of that.
	It is also important that decisions on those matters of individual liberty must not be seen to be left to either the security services or the police. That is unfair and dangerous because it is very hard for them to know what to ask for, and, when you give it to them, it is very hard for them not to lock people up. Let us remember what happened under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001: 23 people were locked up, under such supervision as it was possible for the courts to give them through the Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal system, for up to three and a half years. Yet when the Law Lords declared that to be contrary to law, in the case of A in December 2004, about half of them were let out and some placed under control orders but to the best of my knowledge—I will be corrected if I am wrong—not one of them has been prosecuted, notwithstanding that they were held in custody for far longer than is proposed in the 90 days provision.
	On the debate between the 28 days and 90 days proposals, which will not be central in your Lordships' House unless it is pushed forward on an amendment, although I deeply respect what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, and those with experience of the security services say, I am far from convinced that the case is made out for one particular length rather than the other. I am far from convinced that we should necessarily see any prosecutions even if that longer period were given. It will be very interesting to learn from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, at least something on the drift of why he thinks prosecutions would have been brought.
	This is only one of six Bills on terrorism since 2000. My second question is: would not money be better spent on building up the security services and the police's specialised membership in this area of anti-terrorism rather than on the Identity Cards Bill, on which enormous sums are likely to be spent? That remains a very serious question. I am glad that we shall deal in Committee with both Bills in parallel.
	The next thing for this House to do is to fulfil its primary role as a revising Chamber. I very much support the points made about the opacity of Clause 1, which deals with encouragement and glorification. It is quite right that intention should be included, but I support all that has been said. I would build on the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, as to the potential injustice that could arise from a definition of recklessness not requiring personal culpability. I also think we must put right the present state of the clause on attendance at a place of terrorist training. Powerful points have been made on that, as they have on the question of libraries and universities by my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour, and the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, both of whom know very well what they are talking about.
	Our duty is to scrutinise the Bill extremely closely and to make sure that it is, in so far as it can be, effective—and like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, I welcome Clause 5—but also fair. It is the abiding principle of all criminal justice, whether it deals with terrorism or general crime, that it is very often right and necessary to be tough, but we must also always be sure that we are fair.

Lord Plant of Highfield: My Lords, I am pleased that the Government have produced a legislative framework for dealing with the terrorist threat in this Bill. There is a very large part of the Bill with which I am entirely happy and in sympathy. I want to concentrate on one element of the Bill, which has just been mentioned: the issue of intention and recklessness. I want to use that as a way of teasing out some issues about the compatibility of that clause with the Human Rights Act, which has not been mentioned so far.
	I was grateful for the advice of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that to be called liberal was a term of abuse in the New Labour lexicon. I have been a member of the Labour Party for about 45 years and I have always regarded myself very definitely as a lower-case liberal. As such, I think the Human Rights Act, in incorporating many of the Convention Rights, does embody a form of liberalism in that broadest sense. It is important for me, and for the Government, who are supposed to legislate in accordance with the requirements of the Human Rights Act—there is a declaration on the face of the Bill that the Bill is compatible with Convention rights—this should be looked at in some detail, as of course it will be by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The other constraint on the Government's legislative intention is, as the noble Minister made clear, the Council of Europe's Convention on Terrorism, which the Government signed and wish to ratify. The Bill, if it is to become an Act in its present form, will have to compatible both with the Human Rights Act and the European Council convention.
	I want to concentrate on the issue of intention and recklessness. I begin by going back the Home Secretary's Statement to the House of Commons on 20 July. He said:
	"The proposal targets those who, although not directly inciting, glorify and condone terrorist acts, knowing full well that the effect on their listeners will be to encourage them to turn to terrorism. So, indirect incitement, when it is done with the intention of inciting others to commit acts of terrorism—that is an important qualification—will become a criminal offence".—[Official Report, Commons, 20/7/05; col. 1254.]
	In that Statement to the House of Commons, there were two elements in the Home Secretary's mind: explicit intention and knowing full well what the effect of what you were saying was supposed to be. That "knowing full well" clearly refers to a state of mind on the part of the person making the speech, or doing whatever he was doing.
	Of course, this is rather different from what has ended up in the Bill, as a number of speakers have said. In the Bill we have, rather, what has come to be called an objective test of recklessness; not "what is in my mind" but rather "how it would be reasonable for me to expect other people to respond to my words". It is no longer a subjective test; it is a test of what it would be reasonable to presume. So, under the Bill, an offence may be committed either by an intentional action or by objective recklessness. That is very different from what the Home Secretary said on 20 July. My worry is why there has been this shift of ground. It may seem a terribly arcane point, but it is a pretty fundamental shift. The answer given by the Home Secretary is that very few convictions would have ensued from a purely intentional test, as intention would be very difficult to prove, particularly in the case of a denial of intention.
	Given the importance of intention in so much of law, quite a lot of law would go up in smoke if this, in general, was taken to be true. Juries reach verdicts every day as to whether, on the evidence taken as a whole, an accused person did or did not intend to commit the offence with which he or she is charged. The issue of the accused person's denial is only one element of that. It seems to me that juries are well equipped to determine whether someone intended to do something. The argument that the question of intention means we will not get enough convictions seems to me to be rather weak.
	Whether we will get enough convictions if we define an offence one way rather than another seems to me rather the wrong way of looking at an offence. Surely, the important thing is to define the offence as clearly and precisely as we can, and then to prosecute under that clear and precise definition, not to see how far can we broaden the scope or basis of this offence in order to maximise the number of prosecutions? That seems to me to be a very peculiar approach to the whole thing. What worries me is that this may well be incompatible with the Human Rights Act in a very specific way. All these things will be subject to the Convention's principles of abridgements of freedoms, prescribed by law. I am not at all sure that this objective recklessness test will meet the principle of being prescribed by law because, essentially, whether I have committed an offence under that part of the clause will depend on other people's reactions to what I have done. I will not know if I have committed an offence until I see how they react; is this compatible with the idea of the rule of law lying behind the notion of something being prescribed by law? I think that is the fundamental issue here.
	Indeed, the objective recklessness test requires me, in a sense, to predict the behaviour of people who may well be inherently unreasonable: that is why they are about to go out and bomb people. I think the objective recklessness test may well fall foul of the compatibility requirement that is on the face of the Bill. The same would be true of the Convention, which, in two paragraphs of its articles, refers only to intention. It does not say anything about recklessness. If the Government wish to ratify the Council of Europe Convention on Terrorism, which they say they do—and it is all in the Explanatory Notes—they must explain how they can do that, given that the Bill we now have is rather different from what the Home Secretary suggested on 20 July. The basis of the offence has undergone a very big change. Even though it might look an arcane point, it is an exceptionally large change.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine: My Lords, to follow one philosopher of distinction in a debate is lucky, but to follow two of the calibre of the noble Lords, Lord Parekh and Lord Plant of Highfield, is indeed a privilege.
	The question that law makers must ask themselves is quite simple: will this legislation help to prevent terrorism and to prosecute terrorists? Let me say at the outset that I hope it will enhance the ability of the security services in preventing terrorism, in so far as it is possible to do so through legal measures. I remain convinced that much prevention of crime comes through human intelligence, and much of that from the very people who might be affected by the sweeping powers in this Bill. The second part of the question is whether it will make it easier to identify and apprehend would-be terrorists. Here I have many doubts as the net is cast so wide in order to render the apprehension of so many that identifying the terrorist must become more rather than less difficult.
	Perhaps it would also be useful to spell out the underlying assumption of my question, which is that of proportionality. Will the legislation give the security services additional tools, but only at so great a cost to freedom and liberty that we need to proceed carefully? Does it go so far as to become counter-productive?
	I speak, some would say predictably, from the perspective of one who is from the community most affected by these measures—the Muslim community. But lest one gets accused of special pleading, let me say that my views on this Bill are shaped by a concern for the civil liberties of all. While it might be Muslims who are under suspicion today, it can be another group tomorrow, as Irish Catholics will testify.
	Many noble Lords have had briefings from civil liberties groups on the impact of the Bill. I wonder whether they have seen the briefing from Islamic Forum Europe. This body has produced a leaflet which is directed at Muslims. It is entitled Terrorism Bill 2005 Impact on British Muslims. It details in plain English what the implications might be for Muslims and refers to Clauses 1 and 2, entitled the "Encouragement of terrorism" and the "Dissemination of terrorist publications". The leaflet states:
	"Under these clauses you could be prosecuted for: Careless talks/speeches if they are 'interpreted' as encouragement to attempt a terrorist attack . . . If retrospective search by police find that you have attended meetings/gatherings with suspects . . . Acts of generosity such as allowing someone, who later proves to be a suspect, to stay at a house or even giving them a lift in a car for their journeys . . . Speaking up for the right of the oppressed in Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya, Kashmir and elsewhere to use arms in self-defence".
	On the extension of the grounds for proscription under the Terrorism Act 2000, covered by Part 2 of the Bill, it states:
	"Non-violent Muslim organisations could be banned simply for their beliefs or views".
	It points out:
	"You can be prosecuted for wearing a range of Islamic symbols or logos that newly proscribed groups also use e.g. the black flag with the Shahada inscribed".
	I shall explain for those noble Lords not familiar with the expression that shahada refers to the testimony of being a Muslim. It is the first verse of the Qu'ran and is to be found on a range of Islamic texts and symbols, including national flags.
	My point in mentioning this leaflet is to illustrate the effect that this Bill is already having on community relations. I am sure that the Minister will say that these interpretations of the Bill are incorrect. The point is that we cannot know if they are because the scope is so wide as to defy accuracy—legal certainty, as has been pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland. The Bill's tests in terms of indirect encouragement, relying as they do on persons,
	"reasonably to be expected to infer",
	or "recklessness", are deeply subjective. Moreover, referring to "members of the public", as they do, begs the question: which members of which public in which country? What might be acceptable behaviour to an Israeli may not be acceptable behaviour to a Palestinian.
	We politicians above all others must recognise that political and religious differences are deeply and sincerely held. Hence, criminalising speech through an offence of glorification or recklessness is not the solution; rather, it may exacerbate the very problem of extremism by giving the impression that the state does not tolerate dissent.
	A further issue with Clause 1 is the definition of terrorism itself. In Pakistan in the early 1980s, I witnessed the calls by the US and UK governments to Afghan and Pakistani Mujaheddin to rise up against Soviet forces in Russia. In the words of Ronald Reagan, they were "proud freedom fighters". I say to the Government that it would be morally suspect for them now to seek to criminalise activities that cannot properly be regarded as terrorism. There are still parts of the world where underground struggles for freedom are the only basis for fighting subjugation and oppression. One has only to look at the recent history of Europe to see that, in certain circumstances, there are no other choices.
	My final point concerns Clause 21—the grounds for the proscription of terrorist organisations. Those of us who work around issues to do with extremism know people in groups whose views we find deeply distasteful. Yet we accept the first rule of conflict resolution—that, in order to transform the situation from one of conflict to one of peace, we have to listen. When you say to people that their political ideology cannot be discussed, you are saying in effect that you are practising the state censorship of political views. This will not sit with the most minimum standards of freedom of expression. It will be seen as disproportionate and will drive groups underground. A consequence of that will be that the very intelligence needed to apprehend those who support terrorism will become harder to detect.
	In her opening remarks the Minister said that Clauses 1 and 2 came from an approach whereby a climate should not be allowed to take hold in which,
	"impressionable people believe that terrorism is acceptable".
	Indeed, there has been a tone in the wider public debate which somehow implies that all Muslims are terrorists, or that all terrorists are Muslim. I would argue that terrorists are terrorists, and to imply that there is somehow a malaise in a certain community from which this hydra has given birth is simply wrong. It is wrong today and it will be wrong tomorrow.
	I started with a question about whether this Bill would be helpful in deterring terrorism. If it goes through in the form that it has come to us, it will be of diminished value in so doing. Moreover, it will have so fundamentally altered the balance between liberty and democracy on the one hand and the duty of the state to protect its citizens on the other that it will undermine good relations between the communities for a long time to come. That is a legacy which would be most unwelcome.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: My Lords, Benjamin Franklin reminded us that those who surrender liberty for security deserve neither. We should be mindful of those words as we debate this Bill. In the face of terrorism, it is very easy to be overwhelmed by revulsion and a desire to act. It is easy to see new law as a way of sending tough signals to those who are our enemies. It is easy to see legislating as a way of providing the security and paternalism that people seem to want in such insecure times. Great though the pressures may be, governments should try to stand above the pressure to act and above the fray. They should take careful stock of the ways in which any benefits brought by new law might be outweighed by the damage done to our democratic rights and freedoms.
	We all agree that getting the protections right can be hard. Along with other noble Lords, I have no difficulty with the idea of introducing an offence of "acts preparatory to terrorism". In our new world, occasionally individuals may participate on an ad hoc basis in an act of terrorism or prepare for an act of terrorism while having no links with anyone else, thus making a conspiracy charge impossible. So I understand the benefit of introducing such a charge. In the current circumstances, I also understand that we want to have in place legislation to deal with the training of people for terrorism in, for example, Pakistan.
	However, in drafting such legislation, it is important that we are careful not to draw into the loop those who may not have the appropriate intention. Getting the balance right is hard. Into the balance must be put the fact that certain laws might alienate sections of our communities which we very much hope might be a source of intelligence, vital in combating terrorism. But that intelligence will close down if people feel that laws are being directed specifically at them. This is not because the Muslim community sympathises with terrorism but because there is a growing sense that special laws are being introduced just for them, that their people are being targeted and that they are in the firing line—a point frequently repeated to me at public meetings. It generates silence. We saw that with the Irish situation—an anxiety about expressing a view or going to the police with suspicions, a fear that they are all being lumped together and that, if they are not careful, they or their sons will be falsely accused.
	Terrorism always grows out of perceptions of injustice. Young Muslims in Britain look around the world and see people who share their faith suffering and being humiliated. Their sense of outrage against injustice is strong. That is an emotion common to the young, and some of us never outgrow it—the emotion of empathy and compassion when we see people being ill-treated or suffering. That emotion will be greatly inflamed if we are not careful about how we respond to the current threat that we all face. That is one of the reasons that we must exercise great caution in risking the imprisonment of people for lengthy periods without charge on mere suspicion. It is to be resisted with great care. We should also be careful about closing down the free debate that must take place about political situations around the world, whether in the Middle East, Chechnya, Afghanistan or Iran.
	A number of misperceptions have blighted the whole debate on the Bill. Last night I was talking to a Member of Parliament about the government attempt to introduce detention without charge for 90 days. The MP said to me that it was ridiculous that the police, in such difficult and serious cases, should have to cut off their investigations after just 14 days. I had to point out that that was not true. He was amazed when I explained that there was no such cut-off. After charging, police actually carry on with their investigations. They carry on interrogating witnesses who might be able to help their case in court; they carry on trying to make connections between individuals in custody and others around the world; and they carry on with their investigations into the forensics in the case—whether it is computers or links with explosives. What they cannot do after charging is to continue interrogating. That is the difference.
	There is nothing to stop the disembowelling of computers or the questioning of people abroad about an arrested person long after the charge is made. However, the reason that questioning does not continue after a very limited period—the reason that we have made that the rule—is that until now we have considered the great risks attached to continuing with interrogation over days and weeks and into months. People are more likely to confess to things that they did not do. We know how oppressive that can be. We also know the cost to people of being taken in, being kept in custody and not being charged. If that occurs over a long period of time, even if ultimately they are returned to their homes, there may be cost in terms of their employment and their relations with their families and how they are perceived by the rest of their community or by society at large. The damage to them personally is never retrieved.
	Our current 14-day detention period is way in excess of that of any other Commonwealth country and even that of most European countries. I have laid out the reasons. Interrogations over those long periods are resisted by civilised democracies. Even in most European countries there would not be detention for as long as a month before charging. One of the risks was set out by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. Too often we look at a country with a totally different system, such as France, and cherry pick what people do elsewhere without understanding that the checks and balances are different within a common-law system.
	What is the answer to the problem posed by the police—that the world of international terrorism is more complex? I am currently involved with a terrorist-linked trial at the Old Bailey. The officers on the case told me that in the high-tech unit of the anti-terrorist squad they have only eight officers with the skill to unpack the contents of a computer. That is double what was available to them only a few months ago. Resourcing is an issue.
	Secondly, why do we not look at the possibility of creating an exception to the rule of no requestioning after charge? If something of real significance comes to light—a witness abroad who says, "I know that this man was in a training camp in Pakistan"—why cannot we have an exception to the rule of no further questioning on an application to a High Court judge and with the sanction of the Attorney-General? We would not then have to abase our principles and demur from things that have been part of our rule of law.
	I, too, am concerned about the charge of encouraging terrorism because I think that we should have clear intent in the Bill. I am also concerned about proscribing non-violent organisations, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir. Doing so will drive it underground and alienate whole sections of our Muslim community. They are intelligent people, who do not espouse violence but do want a debate about the principles of Sharia law and so on.
	Finally, the debate is important and will continue over the weeks in Committee. It is important that we remember that justice is the supreme ethical value and that there can be no peace without it. If we want to end terrorism, we have to do so with justice.
	When my noble friends on the Back Benches and one of our new Labour colleagues say that we may be looking at a time when collective rights come to the fore and individual rights will wither on the vine, I can only say that if that is true and if that is the future we are looking at, I feel deeply sad. I am a democratic socialist but I am a liberal, and I am proud of bearing all those labels. I can say with a true sense of alarm that if it is felt on our own Benches that individual rights do not matter, let us remember Stalin.

Lord Desai: My Lords, being the 27th speaker, almost everything that I want to say has been said. Briefly, when we were debating the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, I put forward a criterion that has been kindly quoted by the noble Lady, Baroness Park of Monmouth, as to how we will have to strike a balance. This is my rule and may not be anyone else's. Simply, on the one hand we want to prevent the probability of an innocent person being incarcerated, but on the other hand we want to diminish the probability that a terrorist might escape and kill a lot of people. We have to balance those two probabilities.
	In an absolute sense, some people would say that they do not want a single innocent person to be incarcerated and that that is our tradition. I respect that. I cast my balance slightly differently. I am not saying that I am right or you are wrong. Nothing is right or wrong; we all strike our balance differently. The balance that I strike has, I admit, been disturbed, or enhanced, by what happened on 7 July. Perhaps I should not let such events influence me, but I do.
	What I like about the Bill is the provision on acts preparatory to terrorism. Again, when debating the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, we decided that as soon as possible in the new Parliament we would have a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament to discuss and to consult, and that the Government would bring forward a Bill, which we would then discuss. That of course did not happen because of what took place on 7 July. We now have a much more hurried process due to those circumstances. But, within that context, we have to scrutinise the clause on acts preparatory to terrorism very carefully because it is crucial to what we want to do.
	I do not think the clause on glorification of terrorism is very good. On the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill I argued that speech acts should not be punished unless there is strict intentionality. The same applies here. It is not, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said, that Professor Wilkinson or John Simpson will be incarcerated—the good people will not be incarcerated—but I worry about the bad people, the ordinary people, the graduate student, the amateur who happens to look at computer records on the websites of different Islamic organisations. Common sense tells me that we have a fair system—we know that the Director of Public Prosecutions will not round up everyone and prosecute them—but, as an academic, I worry about what might happen to an enthusiastic student, especially a bad one who does not know how to carry out research and who would probably get into trouble.
	We have not made the one very simple distinction that the problem is not Islam or religion but ideology. We have to understand the distinction between Islam and what is called Islamism. There are various phases of Islamism—some are quite local and others are national—but we face global Islamism. The global Islamism that al-Qaeda represents has a story which, although it uses religious symbols, is a political story. We have to understand the political story that global Islamism is telling us.
	It starts with the decline of the Ottoman empire and the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924. I shall not go into all the details but there is a genuine belief among many Muslims that they have been in decline ever since then. They believe that the only way to restore the glory of the Muslim community is to attack the main enemy—the West—by guerrilla means and to inflict as much damage as possible because that will begin to revive the glory of the Muslim community.
	The majority of Muslims are not concerned with this hard line ideology. Likewise, in the days of our own glorious past there was a philosophy called Marxism and there was a state terrorism called Stalinism. They both used the language of Marxism but they were very different things. Similarly with Islam: global Islamism is a much more sinister and violent ideology than that of the people who argue that, for example, Sharia should be adopted by Muslim states, or that perhaps states such as Pakistan and Egypt have deviated from the true path that a Muslim state should follow. They are different issues.
	The more we understand the enemy, the better we will be able to deal with that enemy. If we do not understand the enemy and cast our net too wide, we will punish innocent people.

Lord Brennan: My Lords, it has rightly been said in the debate that a primary duty of the state is to protect its citizens against death and injury from terrorism. That duty is no less when it comes to protecting those citizens who have been killed or injured by terrorism. The Bill seeks to implement in part the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism. The preamble of that convention requires that all member states, including ours, express their profound solidarity with the victims of terrorism and their families. In Clause 17 of the Bill the Government seek to extend—in my view rightly—the prosecution of terrorist offences outside the UK and across the globe because terrorism is now a world threat. I ask the question: what do we do in this country to protect those who have been injured or killed here or abroad by terrorism? What do those of us who have spoken today, with such vigour, for liberty and security do for these people?
	In none of the terrorism Bills that have come into being since 2001 is there a word about what is to be done for the victims of terrorism. Although, ironically enough, we have sought to protect the human rights of accused people in respect of forfeiture and the like, and although we give compensation to those who have suffered damage to their property because of the actions of the police during the proper investigation of terrorist offences, for the victims there is nothing.
	On 7 July, 52 people were killed inside the United Kingdom; 11 died at Sharm el-Sheikh a couple of weeks later, 33 in Bali—they were from this country—and in Turkey and in the Middle East. Many more were injured beyond the 160 odd who lost their lives. Families were disrupted and lives ruined. In other countries, those whose lives are affected—either the victims who died, the survivors or the injured—get support. In the United States the scheme embraces all within that country who are killed or injured by terrorism, and all American citizens wherever they are injured. It is the same in France, in Israel and in other countries.
	What about the United Kingdom? We treat the victims of terrorism—those we want to protect so specially—as victims of crime. In a code of practice for the victims of crime published in October, which I have just looked at, terrorist offences and terrorist victims get no special mention—and yet we say they deserve the maximum protection. A young woman of 32 had to have a double amputation of her legs after 7 July. She has no income. Who is going to pay the rent or the mortgage? Who is going to sort out adequate prostheses for two legs? Who is going to pay for the medical treatment? What are we to do?
	It is said that as the terrorist offences happened in England the victims can apply to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority—not in person but on paper—but not for all they have lost, only for a capped maximum. This does not apply in the other countries I have described. They have to wait until the authority has got, if you do not mind, the police reports—an authority that is under-funded, under-staffed and which under-compensates. If they have the misfortune to be killed at Sharm el-Sheikh or in Bali, they get nothing; nothing from the Government here, or from the governments in some of those countries, such as Egypt. They get no insurance, because when they next travel abroad and look at their policy, they see that their £20 premium has an exclusion for terrorism. The people from Sharm el-Sheikh who applied got nothing. They are adrift—those we want to protect. In this debate, can we not garner the enthusiasm in favour of liberty and of security, and remember those who have actually suffered?
	On 19 October in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister rightly said the Government would consider a scheme to compensate the victims of terrorism here and abroad. I personally regard these victims as people suffering in a different order of magnitude from ordinary crime. They are the front-line casualties—if we are to call this a war—and they deserve the maximum consideration and all that is necessary to help them recover their lives.
	We should have a "victims of terrorism support" organisation. It should be properly funded, efficient and rapid, and could be financed by insurance. The French do this with a levy of €3—£2—per policy. When you think that 65 million foreign visits are made by the people of this country each year, and think in your mind's eye of the travel premium for each one, a couple of euros is a modest expense to protect the victims of terrorism.
	We have been here before. In the Blitz and the Second World War, Churchill told the nation that it was:
	"unfair for British society to place the entire burden of the destruction on those unlucky enough to be hit".
	That goes for those unlucky enough to be killed or injured, wherever it might occur. So hereafter in our debate, either by amendment or the announcement of a new scheme by the Government, let us be seen to do something for the victims of terrorism as well as debate liberty and security.

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port: My Lords, I live and work across the street from the Honourable Artillery Company, near the City of London. In 1992, it was subjected to an attack by the IRA. The damage was considerable; our windows, across the street, were blown in. I remember how, in response to the urgent advice of our political leaders of that time, we all kept our eyes and ears open for anything suspicious and that we lived through some scary days and weeks. This year, the Honourable Artillery Company became the site of the morgue where forensic experts dealt with the remains of the victims of the 7 July bombings. Some of those involved in that grim work came across the street, from time to time, to seek refuge from their distressing work in our little oasis.
	I can be in no doubt that terrorism has developed and mutated into something far more grim and ghastly during the 13 years separating those events. That is why I cannot place my entire confidence in a view of civil liberties that supposes that existing safeguards can deal adequately with present and emerging patterns of terror. I add the word "emerging", as this nefarious activity, however we define it—much reference has been made to the need for definition—is on the cusp of newly developing technologies. I suspect that it will keep spinning away from us as fast as any coping mechanism of law or law enforcement that we may devise.
	In seeking the balance so often referred to in the debate between our security and our civil liberties, I find myself, for the first time in my adult life, instinctively wanting the need for security to be put first, with safeguards for liberty being built in subsequently, as checks and balances. It was said earlier in the debate that increasing security was not best done by restricting civil liberties. I could turn that on its head fairly simply by saying that safeguarding civil liberties is not always best achieved by being lax on security. They clearly go hand in hand and will always require fine tuning. The innocence and diversity of the victims of the 7 July bombings on that bus and on those Tube trains and the prospect that others may follow them into abrupt and cruel death seem to demand that we treat security as being of the utmost importance.
	I am not happy with the loose phrasing or the vagueness of the idea of glorifying, praising or exalting terrorism. I forebear from repeating views that have been made well enough in the preceding part of the debate. Clearly, there is a lot of work to do to tighten the legislation to respond to the expressed needs of other Members. However, I want to repeat the view that I heard earlier from my noble friend Lord Parekh, who said that we should intensify our efforts to understand the views of those who resort to such extreme and radical action as we have been contemplating in this debate and that we should encourage the acquisition of an informed opinion about why some people are prepared to act in the ways that we so naturally abhor. I have heard with great interest the contributions about academic freedoms and the acquisition of the widest possible range of printed materials in libraries and so on, which seems to me to be absolutely essential for a full and free-ranging debate, and, indeed, for a deeper understanding of what it is that leads people to commit terrorist acts.
	So we must seek too to recognise the nuances and the subtleties in the thinking of Muslims at this time. The large majority of Muslims will certainly want to support those seeking to find effective ways of responding to terrorism. So it is bound to be counter-productive to conduct our discussion in such a way that we simply alienate those who should be our allies. Incidentally, it ought to be of interest to all of us to note the difference between the proposals in this Bill, with its clauses that criminalise incitement to terrorist activity, and those in the Bill that we recently discussed about incitement to religious hatred. In the case of one, the Government were accused by their opponents of pandering to Muslims in order to win their votes; in the case of the other, the Government are accused by Muslims of pandering to cheap popularism by villianising them.
	At the end of the day, terrorism will be defeated, as was said a little earlier by my noble friend Lord Judd, only when we have addressed its causes and when those who resort to sporadic and destructive violence and who are prepared to sacrifice their own life in such action feel that their voices are heard and understood. However hard that is for us to cope with intellectually or emotionally, at some stage we have got to engage with that. I suspect that we will need a few more terrorism Bills before we attain that happy issue out of all our afflictions, but we should never shut our eyes, in discussing the immediate needs in law of providing for the citizens of this land, to that longer and more distant scene. If the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, could end his consideration of this practical legislation by reminding us that this is not an abstract issue, I would suggest that keeping our eye on the more distant scene, where, with hearts and minds won, we may contemplate a happier existence, is not an abstract issue either.

Lord Ahmed: My Lords, I fully support the Government's review of existing anti-terrorism laws, although it is a difficult trade-off between liberty and security. The Bill is clearly a reaction to the heinous and deplorable crimes of 7 July, but proposed law must have at its root the intention to stop further criminal acts. It must not encourage further crime through marginalisation and the squeezing of the space within which legitimate political debate can be held.
	There are fundamental weaknesses in the proposed legislation, from its unclear definition of terrorism to the superfluous clauses on encouragement and glorification of terrorism—as has been mentioned by many of your Lordships—at home and abroad by individuals and organisations in Part 1, Clause 1, Part 2, Clause 21, and the extension of custody periods without charge in Clauses 23 and 24.
	The definition of terrorism in its ordinary usage is the use of violence to achieve an end. Violence is used occasionally by us through war to achieve an end—in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example. The workability of the definition turns entirely on the current political judgment of whether the end is justifiable.
	Many of us here marched in support of the ANC. As was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Stratford earlier, despite the ANC's use of violence, we felt that the end was justifiable. We did so even though many in the then Conservative government believed that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. But in so marching and supporting, we were not guilty of criminal offences. No one would today disagree that Nelson Mandela is an international inspiration and legitimate leader. Our government at that time got it wrong, and in years to come we may feel the same about Iraq. History can teach us salutary lessons.
	The reason why I give those examples is that they prove that one generation's terrorist is another generation's head of state. Names such as George Washington and Prime Minister Begin come to mind. Under the Bill, for the first time, we in Britain are trying to create a law with international application that will effectively determine the legitimacy or illegitimacy of political disputes in the world. It will deem non-state actors involved in military conflicts against armies of oppression as terrorists, despite the states that they oppose being engaged in rape, torture and other abuses of human rights and where the UN has consistently failed to implement its resolutions. In her reply, will my noble friend the Minister say whether resisting state terrorism could be deemed to be being involved in terrorism and whether sympathisers of those legitimate struggles would fall foul of the Bill? That should not be the effect of the Bill. Its aim should be to protect our citizens, not to alienate communities through suppressing debate. Will my noble friend tell us whether those parliamentarians who have supported the legitimate right of self-determination in Kashmir and Palestine, in accordance with UN resolutions, being classed as sympathisers with terrorists, especially in the light of the statement made by the Prime Minister on his most recent visit to India, when he referred to the Kashmiri freedom fighters as terrorists?
	Many of your Lordships will be familiar with an organisation called Mujahideen al-Khalq, a proscribed organisation engaged in armed struggle against the Iranian Government. Indeed, many of us have been lobbied by it and some support its cause. The Bill would make such support criminal, as it would be deemed to be encouraging terrorists. Will those parliamentarians who have been supporting armed rebels from south Sudan engaged in a violent warfare with the Sudanese Government being classed as indirectly inciting terrorism? Do states engaging in terrorist activity also fall within the law? Will those individuals or groups who support such terrorist states be deemed to have committed criminal acts?
	This year, I stood in the cold while my granddaughter and her friends celebrated Guy Fawkes' Day on November 5th. I wonder whether we were engaged in glorifying terrorism. After all, Mr Fawkes tried to bring down the very place in which we now sit, the very heart of our democracy. However, year in and year out, we spend millions of pounds celebrating November 5th. The boundaries of when a social event, academic research, healthy political debate or even a media slip of the tongue become glorification are dangerously blurred. Noble Lords will remember the Prime Minister's wife making comments on the state of the Palestinians and the use of suicide bombing as a tool of war. Would Cherie Booth be guilty of a crime under the Bill?
	In this country, we may fundamentally disagree with certain political opinions, such as in the case of Hizb ut-Tahrir, but we surely all subscribe to the view that I may loathe what you say but will defend your right to say it. Gagging certain political views will only increase the sense of injustice felt by many young Muslims in this country, thus increasing frustration and animosity towards the state. At a time when we are working hard to encourage angry, disfranchised young men to come back into the political fold by engaging in democratic debate, we cannot also be squeezing the space and parameters of healthy debate. We cannot offer the hand of discussion and use the other hand to strangle political beliefs, however unsavoury they may be. There is an enormous leap between understanding why people become suicide bombers in Palestine and encouraging individuals to engage in such violence. The test should be that of intent.
	Finally, I turn to detention without charge. As a magistrate, I regularly heard applications for extension of custody time for further questioning. We heard the evidence and judged whether it would be appropriate for the police to detain further. To date, we have heard no evidence of a case where more than the current 14 days would have stopped a terrorist crime or lead to the charge of a terrorist suspect. Your Lordships may be aware of the figures under terrorism legislation to date. Although 895 people have been arrested, only 23 have been charged. The 872 who have been released back into the community have largely remained unheard of. That will not be the case if they are held for 28 days.
	A fortnight away from your home, community, family and job may be forgiven; a month may not be. It will be those people we release without charge after a lengthy detention who will be fertile ground for breeding resentment and terror. Whatever the legislation, whatever the investment in policing, I remain to be convinced that being tough on terrorism without being tough on the causes of terrorism will yield long-lasting peace and community stability.

Lord Elton: My Lords, I always wonder whether the process of taking notes for five hours does not addle the brain, but I will do my best with what I have here.
	The detail of the Bill is complex, but the outline is simple. Sharp among the detail has been what the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, has said, and of which I very much hope the Minister has taken careful note. For too long, the noble Baroness has been a solitary voice, drawing attention to matters of fundamental importance to this House and the country. In case she should have been thought by some who do not know her to be a fussbudget and a nervous person, she is, as many of your Lordships know, one of the bravest people in the country, and has demonstrated it on frequent occasions.
	It really is extraordinary that we should be complacent, not merely about the threats to the noble Baroness's person, to this building and to us, but also about the fact that somebody with known terrorist affinities of the first order should have a controlling interest in a commercial concern which has access to all the most sensitive security sites and processes in this country. The question is too embarrassing to answer, but I hope that the Minister will not spare her own blushes when she replies.
	The other point of detail which shone out brightly was made by the noble Lord, Lord Brennan. He drew your Lordships' attention, in a very eloquent, focused and pertinent way, to the victims of terrorism who are, in some cases, scandalously neglected. This may not fall within the scope of the Bill as drafted—it may not come within the scope of the Long Title—but it must surely come swiftly within the scope of government policy.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, drew our attention to the crucial nature of the shortage of resources in certain parts of our security and police organisations. That, too, is a matter of detail, but it is of very great importance. Something else she said struck me very much as relating to the outline within which this whole debate is taking place. There can be, she said, no peace without justice. Chiming with that was the focusing of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, on the paramountcy of community relations.
	What is under attack is British society, which is very far from what it was when I was a child. I was brought up during the war, when our society was exceedingly cohesive because it was under very clear and visible physical attack, which threatened all of us. We had a coherent philosophy, a coherent religious attitude and coherent standards of behaviour which have all, since then, dissolved. So what we are defending now is much more amorphous and vague; it is much more difficult to attract the passionate loyalty of those who wish to defend it. A house that is divided against itself cannot stand, and unless something is done about our divided society, whatever we put in the Bill, we are in peril.
	Terrorists come into a weak community, with a very strong theology and philosophy of their own. They come upon people questioning the rights of what they do while having no questions themselves about the rights of what they do.
	My noble friend Lord Hurd said that intelligence, not legislation, was the best weapon. At present, intelligence is scanty. The intelligence we need is about the things that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark drew to our attention when he said that without condoning or excusing violence, we must understand and address its underlying causes.
	On community relations, the fact that there are, regrettably, a great many people who have been in this country for 30 or 40 years and have to bring their children and grandchildren along as interpreters, shows that we need to know more about our own society and change it. It is not entirely the fault of those who have been here so long, without absorbing even the language of the country of their adoption, that they have not done so. This needs to be addressed urgently but not within the perimeters of this Bill. As my noble friend Lady Park said, how is it that the Muslim extremists in this country have a loyalty to the world Islamic state which trumps loyalty to this country? The nations of this world have duties and obligations towards each other which are exactly parallel to the duties and obligations of their citizens to each other.
	It is a clear fact that we are one of the very richest nations in the world. There are countries which, by comparison, are destitute. That injustice will always breed violence. It goes outside the Long Title of this Bill, but it is the context in which we legislate. That is what I wish to remind your Lordships of. We have an obligation not merely to defend our state and our citizens, but to create a world in which we deserve the security and peace that the rest of the world could give us, if there were justice in it. It is not a popular thing to say t suggest that we have to do things that will cost money, at a time when our economy, I fear, is on the brink of recession. But in the long term it is in our own best interest. It is remarkable that the teaching to be found in the Good Book so often coincides with what is, in the long run, in our best interests. Our foreign policy and the work of DfID are as germane to this problem as is the contents of this Bill, the detail of which I shall be very interested to discuss with the noble Baroness, covering all sorts of recondite problems, including the question of whether the devolution of the warrant-giving powers of the Secretary of State to Scottish Ministers is a sensible piece of devolution. I have said enough to fill my seven minutes.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I concur almost entirely with the detailed critique of the Bill made from these Benches and indeed Cross-Bench Conservative and Labour Benches. I propose for a few minutes to confine my remarks to terrorist motivation—or, as it is called, hearts and minds.
	If the real answer to terrorism was the legislation of unprecedented numbers of criminal offences and state powers, we would be the safest country on earth. As we have experienced, however, that path exemplifies the law of diminishing returns. So, too, police advice is far from conclusive. They are indeed the experts on the hardware of crime, but when it comes to the political and cultural context of terror, it is noble Lords, our colleagues in the Commons and civic leaders who have responsibility for considering and deciding.
	So how does one influence hearts and minds to minimise terrorist outrage? It is easy to forget that would-be terrorists, in terms of their ardour and sense of grievance, are not in a fixed state of mind; it waxes and wanes along with their sense of alienation and indignation. That, I suggest, will be closely related to what we in this place and those in the other place decide to do in the Bill.
	I am talking now of the Muslim communities, who feel particularly vulnerable and targeted by the provisions in this Bill.
	One damaging aspect of the panicky hysteria of too many tabloids, megaphoning their readers on how to stamp out terrorism, is to elide suspicion with guilt. The alleged terrorist is implicitly assumed to be guilty. That approach wholly overlooks the angst—sometimes, indeed, the hatred—generated among vulnerable communities by what they perceive as unfairness, for example in the form of false imprisonment. That then becomes, as others have said, a recruiting sergeant for the very thing the new law is designed to prevent.
	Although the comparison with the IRA at the height of its unscrupulous violence, very effectively made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, and the present terrorism has its limits, they share a context. The IRA could only carry on the armed struggle with widespread support—or, at least, non-opposition—from within the Catholic community. It was essential, for both their self-justification and safety, that they had such support. This also, of course, frustrated British intelligence. It is because that support was slowly but surely eaten away by the effective and reconciling policies of successive British governments that we have climbed out of the abyss in Northern Ireland. In saying that, I do not underestimate continuing problems and difficulties.
	It seems to me completely misconceived to say, as the noble Lord, Lord Stratford, said, that the Bill should not be amended because, as he put it, he is not prepared to take risks with other people's safety. That is to evade the harsh reality that individual and collective freedoms and security are truly interdependent. Lowering legal standards, legal protections and due process may, I suppose, save some lives immediately, but at the cost of many more lives in future times, as home-grown terrorism is fuelled, fatally, by that ineffectual and, as it is perceived, unjust process.
	Lastly, I think this debate would lack an essential dimension if we overlooked the impact of British foreign policy on the problems of our own Muslim communities. There can be no shadow of doubt, I fear, that our engagement in Iraq, the inadequacy—as many see it—of our engagement with the Israel/ Palestine problem and, indeed, other areas of our foreign policy, have made a significant contribution to the problems that we are grappling with. We need to remember that, because if we do not, we will not get this complex balancing act correct.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Elton, I hope that the Government will pay particular attention to the speech this afternoon by my noble friend Lady Cox. I agree with the noble Lord that she has done more than anyone else in your Lordships' House to warn of the growing danger that militant Islamism poses to western society and the wider world.
	Her warnings are well documented and go back in the official record to well before 9/11, at least to her contribution on the gracious Speech of 18 November 1999. On that occasion she exposed Islamist activities in Sudan, the Caucasus, Dagestan and Chechnya. She also drew attention to the threat that violent Islamism already posed to this country, by quoting the militant leaders, Abu Hamsa and Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, speaking thus a few days previously in London:
	"We declare that we will never rest until we establish the Khilafah, that is an Islamic State for all Muslims worldwide, which will be a shield behind which Muslims can protect themselves and from behind which they can fight the enemies of Allah".—[Official Report, 18/11/99; col. 100.]
	That sort of talk does not endear one to the jihad. I for one was not at all surprised when her next major speech here, on 12 January 2000, was jammed. I had had the interesting pleasure of paying an undercover visit to the Soviet Union with my noble friend before the wall came down. We were both familiar with the kind of warnings one receives when one antagonises large and evil organisations.
	My noble friend referred today to the extraordinary complacency with which our police, security services and Palace authorities reacted to the incident by trying to pretend that her speech had been jammed by a faulty microphone, even when no such faulty microphone could be discovered. Disquieted by this, we also raised questions—as she mentioned—about a report in the Sunday Times on 30 July 2000. This revealed that a Mr Salah Idris, whose factory outside Khartoum was destroyed by US cruise missiles after being linked to Osama bin Laden, had a substantial shareholding in IES Digital Systems, a UK company supplying high-tech surveillance and security management to the Palace of Westminster, New Scotland Yard, the Royal Courts of Justice, some of our nuclear power stations, several of our Armed Forces' establishments, Canary Wharf and British Airways, Texaco and other blue-chip companies.
	After much toing and froing, our security services confirmed that this was so and obligingly revealed that Mr Idris had increased his shareholding to 75 per cent. However, and this is the astonishing point, they suggested that we had no need to worry, because Mr Idris,
	"does not have any day-to-day involvement in the running of the company".
	Your Lordships can relax.
	For a statement that reveals the chasm between our security services, police and bureaucracy on the one hand, and the real world on the other, I submit that that must just about take the biscuit. If you own 75 per cent of a company, you single-handedly fix the remuneration of the directors, can personally hire and fire them and can change the company's memorandum and articles of association at will. Also, you do not presumably increase your shareholding from 25 per cent in 2000 to 75 per cent a year later—after 9/11—unless you are pretty interested in what the company is up to.
	This sort of story makes some of us reluctant to believe the police when they say that they need the power to lock people up for 90 days without charge. At least, it makes one nervous.
	I very much hope that the Minister will address herself seriously to the questions raised by my noble friend Lady Cox, particularly as to whether terrorists are using their money to buy into our national infrastructure, with the aim of destroying our economy and security from within.
	The Bill is largely a laudable attempt to arm ourselves as best we can against the new evil of Islamist terrorism. It introduces new offences and gives the police and our security services wider powers. I wish it well, especially in the improved form in which it will no doubt leave your Lordships' House. But we are unlikely to get rid of this new menace through the powers taken in the Bill, even when added to the considerable powers already granted to the state. We are also unlikely to succeed in bombing the Islamists out of existence. They are by now far too numerous and diffusely spread throughout our western societies and across the globe. It looks as though the bombs may be coming our way for some time yet.
	We need to consider an additional tactic if we are eventually to prevail. We must somehow encourage an honest debate among Muslims as to the true nature and purpose of their religion. To do that we will have to give tremendous support to those Muslims who believe that Islamist violence is in breach of the Koran. These are deep and difficult waters. One problem we westerners face when we consider Islam is that it is both a religion and a political system, and the penalty for deviation from it is death. Islamism is also a movement for world domination, as was Soviet communism. But, although no one believed much in the Soviet system after about 1950—it was held together by fear—these modern Islamists do very much believe in their mission, even to the extent of blowing themselves up in what they fervently believe to be the service of God.
	A few very brave Muslims are beginning to take on this challenge. I recommend a brief article in the Spectator at the end of July this year by Dr Patrick Sookdeo, entitled The Myth of Moderate Islam, in which he sets out some of the uncomfortable parameters of the debate. For instance, he disabuses those of us who used to think that Islam is a basically peaceful religion. Sookdeo points out that nearly all the peaceful verses in the Koran were written before 622, when Mohammed moved to Medina. He also explains the accepted rule of "abrogation", which means that wherever contradictions are found in the Koran it is the later verses which hold sway. I am sure this all very basic stuff to many of your Lordships who have been interested in Islam for many years, but if we are going to encourage debate among Muslims many more of us must know at least something of their religion and its history.
	Dr Sookdeo is Director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity. In his article he points to other Islamic scholars who are courageously starting to open up this whole debate. He ends by suggesting some gradual steps forward, some of which are included in the Bill but which I do not have time to cover today. However, the article certainly opened my eyes, so I have put a copy of it in your Lordships' Library. I commend it to the Minister.

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority with specific responsibility for overseeing the work of the Met in respect of counter-terrorism.
	Last month, myself and the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey—who is not in his place today following the terrible road accident in which he was involved; we all wish him well for his recovery—attended on behalf of your Lordships a conference in Moscow on international terrorism. We were greeted there by a senior representative of the Russian Duma, who welcomed the United Kingdom to the "modern world" as far as terrorism was concerned—forgetting the history, which was referred to earlier, of the Birmingham bombings, or even back 400 years to Guy Fawkes.
	But the important point about that welcome to the modern world was the recognition of the changing nature of terrorism. There is a difference between the terrorism we face today and the terrorism that was faced 10 or more years ago—and that difference is that the objective of the terrorists is not to achieve a political end, a specific outcome of a nature which can be determined by political means. This means that it is not possible, even were it desirable, to negotiate one's way out of terrorism. Furthermore, mass killing is in itself an objective. That is a very different situation from the one in which terrorists were acting to achieve a political objective and where mass killing might alienate those who made the decision.
	The third key difference is the willingness, indeed the desire, to commit suicide as part of a terrorist atrocity. That again is something very different, because the terrorists we have faced in the past wanted to escape; they wanted to live to perpetrate further acts. It makes the investigation that much more difficult—along with, of course, the handling of potential terrorists.
	I am glad that a number of your Lordships have referred to what happened in London on 7 July: 56 dead, 300 hospitalised, and thousands of body parts left at the scenes. The terrifying thing about what happened that day is that it could have been a great deal worse. Indeed, all the prior assessments as to what that kind of incident might have led to suggested it would be worse.
	The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, said the police have not made a case for more than 14 days. I disagree with his conclusion for a number of clear reasons. I am conscious that, following the 7/7 bombings, there was a raid on a property in Yorkshire, the alleged bomb factory—or rather, as I do not know whether one should still call it "alleged", the bomb factory. The police entering the property came across tubs of suppurating gloop. I have seen the videos. I have seen the bubbles forming on the surface of the material. It took two weeks for there to be safe access to the property, during which there was a constant risk that the whole street would be blown away had things gone wrong. It took a further six weeks to complete the examination of the property. Had there been arrests in that case, with the two weeks ticking—or even the 28 days—that would not have been sufficient time to collect evidence from that property.
	In another case, the police seized from one property 650 gigabytes of computer material. Much of that was heavily encrypted. The best code-breaking experts in the country take an extremely long time to process that amount of material. Again, it is impossible to see how two weeks or 28 days would be sufficient to get to the bottom of the material contained there.
	Above all else, though, because of the changing nature of the terrorism we are talking about, there is a need to intervene earlier because of the risks of getting it wrong, and of people slipping through the net and being able to carry out the acts they are planning. The lines of inquiry—in one case, involving 27 overseas jurisdictions—mean that being at a stage where one can intervene safely with enough knowledge to do so is much more difficult than it has been in the past. With regard to the London bombings, 25,000 CCTV tapes have had to be reviewed. There are hundreds of documents in Arabic, and there are insufficient translations.
	Why did we end up with the proposal for 90 days? The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, through his assessment of the material he was provided with, came to the conclusion that 90 days was an appropriate length of time to allow suspects to be held, subject to judicial review of various sorts, before charge. The police's professional judgment was that 90 days was the appropriate time.
	We all rely on professional judgments of one sort or another; for example, when we visit a physician. We have heard today a number of professional judgments from legal experts, QCs and lawyers. Here we had the professional judgment of the police. Now, I am not trying to weigh the relative merits of an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police against a learned QC and say which is the better in terms of professional judgments. I am quite clear, though, that we should listen to the judgment of the police, and take it extremely seriously. This is not a scientific matter, just as it is not a scientific matter for the lawyers who tell us that, in their professional judgment, something is wrong. It is a judgment; a professional best estimate. That is what the police provided the Government with, which is why the Government initially came forward with the 90-day view.
	Various noble Lords have speculated about what may happen if different periods of time are put before this House. I do not yet know whether that will happen. Moving from 14 days to 28 days is an important step in the right direction, but it clearly falls short, by quite a long way, of what was the professional judgment of the police who are involved in these cases.
	I have also heard it said that one of the alternative solutions is much greater investment—that if, for example, you were to invest in much more intensive surveillance of terrorist suspects, this risk would perhaps go away. The reality is that a group of individuals will have 200 close contacts. It may have 2,000 contacts in a wider network. To maintain proper, 24/7 surveillance, as the noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, said, requires teams of perhaps 10 people. Three teams have to cover 24 hours, perhaps with back-up staff to assess the information that they collect. To cover that kind of number of people would require a force engaged just in surveillance of twice the size of the entire Metropolitan Police service. That cost of that, I suspect, would be rather more than we could afford. It would be several billion pounds.
	I close by commending some of the remarks of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark. If we take the measures in the Bill before us, whether amended or otherwise, we must do so in the knowledge that they are only one part of combating terrorism. At the same time, we must address the long-term issues which provide a flow of young people who are prepared to become suicide bombers; for example, what converts a normal adherent of Islam into somebody who might be prepared to act as a suicide bomber? To do that, we have to address the long-term issues that are regarded as matters of grievance by the Muslim community around the world, be it in the Middle East, Kashmir or Chechnya. Unless those grievances are removed, the message that they receive will still seem to have validity. At the same time, in the measures that we take here, we must act proportionately and clearly. To do so, we must explain what we are doing and why we are doing it.
	I believe that the measures in the Bill, whether the 28-day detention period is amended or not, are proportionate. They are certainly appropriate. If we explain them properly and use them wisely, they will be part of an effective contribution to dealing with international terrorism.

Lord Goodhart: My Lords, we have now passed the gap in the speakers' list, so the end of this long but interesting debate is at last in sight. I start by summing up our position. The vote in the House of Commons to limit detention without charge to 28 days rather than 90 days has removed the most controversial single issue from your Lordships' House. Our preference was to leave the limit at 14 days, but we voted for 28 days in the House of Commons, and we will stick to that in your Lordships' House. I recognise that a number of government Back-Benchers wish to reverse this position, and they will no doubt put down amendments on which we will have a debate in due course. However, I do not wish to deal with that matter tonight, because there are other matters on which we will wish to see the Bill amended.
	We welcome fully many parts of the Bill. This includes Clause 5, on acts preparatory to terrorism; it includes Clauses 9 to 12, on radioactive material and nuclear sites; and it includes a number of more detailed provisions.
	I regret that the Bill does not permit intercept evidence to be used in court. Where intercept evidence would prove guilt and where that evidence could be used in court without a threat to national security, it should be so used. We had a full debate about this on Friday during consideration of the Bill of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, and I shall not go into that again tonight, but it is not impossible to reconcile national security with the ability to use some intercepts in trials. We will no doubt come back to that matter in Committee.
	I turn to those clauses where there is a need for amendment. A number of substantial amendments are needed to make the Bill acceptable. I start with Clause 1, which creates the crime of "Encouragement of terrorism". We certainly accept the principle that it should be a criminal offence, but that clause as it now stands needs to be improved in three ways.
	First, we believe that the person in question should be convicted only if he or she intended to encourage terrorism. The Government have modified the original test by amendments introduced on Report in the House of Commons, but they have not gone far enough. The Bill now retains the test of recklessness as an alternative to intent. If the obvious message of a statement is that terrorism in some form or other is a good thing, surely it is easy to draw an inference of intention. But if the statement says less than that, I see no reason why it should be an offence without clear evidence of intent. I do not think that it is useful or desirable, therefore, to include a recklessness test at all, and it is doubly undesirable if, as the Government propose, that test is objective rather than subjective—that is, the defendant does not have to realise that he or she was being reckless. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Plant, on that.
	Secondly, regarding the glorification of terrorism, I agree entirely with the criticisms made by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, the noble and learned Lords, Lord Lloyd of Berwick and Lord Morris of Aberavon, and several other speakers. I believe that these provisions are completely unnecessary. Glorification of terrorism is, under the Bill, an offence if, and only if, it is likely to lead hearers of the statement to infer that they should emulate the terrorist acts which are being glorified. That, in any ordinary meaning, would plainly be encouragement of terrorism. References to glorification add nothing and increase the complications of the Bill, which is already drafted in a way that is impossible for ordinary readers to understand. I believe that the reference to glorification is included only to save the face of the Government because they promised in their manifesto to make glorification an offence—so the word had to appear somewhere in the Bill; although I note that "condone", which was also in the manifesto, does not appear.
	The third problem with Clause 1 is that it contains, as do Clauses 2 and 3, specific defences which have to be proved by the defendant. If offences depend on intent alone, it may be possible to remove those specific defences as being unnecessary. But if that is not the case, the burden of proof should be evidential only, as was the case with similar provisions in the Terrorism Act 2000; that is, once the defendant produces evidence to raise an issue, the prosecution must disprove that defence beyond reasonable doubt. That was spelt out in Section 118 of the 2000 Act.
	Clause 2, relating to the "Dissemination of terrorist publications", is of particular concern to universities, libraries and the media. The definition of "terrorist publication" is extremely wide. I can think of a publication which indicated to its readers that they should use violence against their lawful government, which has been much glorified subsequently and which an oppressed minority could well regard as something that they should emulate. I refer, of course, to the Declaration of Independence. So there is a need to tighten the circumstances in which prosecutions can be brought.
	At present, the test of whether a publication is a "terrorist publication" depends on whether it is likely to be understood by the recipients as an encouragement of terrorism or as something useful for terrorism. Of course that could be something as simple as a London A to Z or a map of the Underground. Nothing whatever is said in Clause 2 about the intention of the provider of the publication, the person who will be charged with the offence. That is completely unacceptable. The Government's test for guilt is not what was in the mind of the defendant, but what might be in the mind of some unidentified persons who are, in all probability, unknown to the defendant.
	The offence must be limited to cases where the intention of the provider is to encourage or give assistance to terrorism. Unless offences are limited in this way, we will find that television news services will be reluctant to, for example, rebroadcast extracts from an Osama bin Laden tape which has been broadcast by Al-Jazeera to the rest of the world. Libraries will be reluctant to lend books to anyone if, in any circumstances, it might fall into the wrong hands and encourage them to assist terrorism. Universities will be inhibited in providing courses such as studies of the motivation of terrorists, as the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, pointed out. I agree on this issue with the noble Baronesses, Lady Carnegy of Lour and Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, and the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, and my noble friends Lady Williams of Crosby, Lady Sharp of Guildford, Lord Carlile of Berriew and Lord Clement-Jones.
	The effect of the Bill will be to place severe restrictions on legitimate teaching by universities, lending by libraries and reporting by the media. I do not believe that the Government intend any of this, but they must amend the Bill. It is not enough to say that the Director of Public Prosecutions would not authorise a prosecution. That would not prevent the chilling effect of the law as it would stand if this Bill were enacted. Clause 6 on training for terrorism also creates serious problems for universities which provide training courses in fields such as chemistry.
	Clause 3 contains what I can only describe as an extraordinary provision. The extraordinariness of it has hardly been recognised, even today. A policeman can serve a notice on an Internet service provider because, in his opinion, it is transmitting a terrorist-related statement. If the service provider does not block that statement within two working days, it will be charged with a serious criminal offence.
	The blocking of websites is a favourite weapon of authoritarian states. It happens regularly in China, Saudi Arabia and other oppressive states. Yet we are here saying that a policeman—no doubt it would not be a bobby on the beat, but we do not say how senior they have to be—can simply take a decision to block a statement on the Internet. The service provider, of course, will have little or no interest in defending the case, and will not dispute the notice.
	I accept that there will indeed be a need for websites which promote terrorism to be blocked. The interference with freedom of expression which this involves, however, will need to be justified in each case. It is therefore essential that the notice must be authorised by a judge who is satisfied that the police have shown grounds justifying the blocking of the website or statement. There must also be a right, when it has been blocked, to apply for a revocation of the notice.
	A difficult issue arises out of Clause 17, which gives the United Kingdom courts jurisdiction over terrorist offences committed by anyone anywhere in the world, whether or not the perpetrators or victims have any connection with the United Kingdom. That raises what I might call the "ANC issue". What happens if the act falls within the definition of terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000, but is an act of economic sabotage against an oppressive government? It is not an adequate answer to say "Oh well, we can rely on the need to obtain consent from the Attorney-General before the prosecution". I have heard it suggested that the jurisdiction should be limited to cases with UK connections. I am not sure that is adequate either. What happens with someone who has committed terrorist acts in a foreign country, but cannot be extradited to that country because they might face torture or the death sentence? It is surely better to try that case in the United Kingdom than to allow that person to be released. So there is a need to find a formula which will stop a trial in the United Kingdom where terrorist acts are committed against an oppressive government and do not involve the deliberate killing of civilians.
	As my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford said, we also oppose Clause 21. If an organisation encourages terrorism, they can be proscribed under Section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000. I see no justification for giving an artificial meaning to what is otherwise a simple phrase. I would have to say that if the Declaration of Independence is a terrorist publication, then the Daughters of the American Revolution is a terrorist organisation.
	Let me therefore sum up. The Bill is one whose objectives are largely good, and we largely support them. However, it is a Bill with serious flaws. As with the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 and the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, it suffers from too rapid preparation and a lack of consultation. In particular, there is a need to ensure that new offences under the Bill will involve a deliberate intent to further terrorism. The Government's failure to foresee problems for universities and libraries in the Bill, and its failure to consult them, is frankly extraordinary, as has already been said. The blocking of websites must be brought under judicial control. Once again, it falls to your Lordships' House to correct defects in an important Bill. Given goodwill by the Government, we will co-operate to produce a Bill which deserves to be on the statute book. The Bill, as it stands, does not.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, this has been a good debate, notwithstanding the last series of heated exchanges. I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in it. There has been not one unnecessary speech or one speech that has inappropriately indicated the comments made by others. Noble Lords will know that we cannot always say that honestly.
	I am also very grateful to all noble Lords who have participated in the debate because of its tone. It has been very constructive and limited opportunity has been taken to make pure political points—although I noted that a temptation was extending from the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that proved almost irresistible. On this occasion, he can perhaps be forgiven by me, although I do not know whether he will be forgiven by all.
	I thank the noble Lords, Lord Kingsland, Lord Henley, Lord McNally and Lord Goodhart, for what they all termed the broad support that they have given to the Bill. I understand the breadth of that support, but I also understand where we parted company. I entirely accept what the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said: that the security of the Realm is the first duty of the Government.
	It is a duty that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and all Ministers take extremely seriously. And, as was made clear by my noble friend Lord Foulkes, it is a view taken very seriously by our Back Bench too. It is a burden which rests firmly on our shoulders, placed there by the people of this country as recently as May of this year.
	We have a duty to advocate that which we believe is right and fair and which will best meet the needs for the safety, security and civil liberties of the citizens of this country. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, for his kind advice but I say to him, in a manner which I hope is equally delicate to the way in which he gave his advice, that we understand that duty and the proper distinction which should be drawn between advice given by the police and the decisions made by Ministers on the basis of all the advice and information given.
	I also say to the noble Lord that independent judgment was applied when the decision was made by this Government. The Government found the evidence put forward by the police to be cogent and persuasive, and the logic of that was exemplified in the contribution of my noble and learned friend Lord Morris of Aberavon and by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew. He found the course adopted by the Government in respect of 90 days understandable and he gave voice to why he thought that decision was sound.
	As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark so rightly stated, it is of the utmost importance to maintain a sense of balance and proportionality. That balance is, as the right reverend Prelate said, difficult and proportionality is the key. We have to differentiate between the unpleasant and intolerant and those who would incite and promote terrorism. I reassure him that we understand that too.
	The challenge of terrorism is one that we all face, and, as my noble friend Lady Symons of Vernham Dean said, we have to face it with a sense of reality. I am therefore glad that my noble friend made such a powerful speech. She rightly directed our attention to the change which has taken place in the nature of terrorism: how it has mutated and how the threat has deepened and become less hierarchical, less structured and more diffuse and difficult. The rights and liberties of the majority, whose lives are put at threat, are of significance, and I give praise to my noble friend Lord Brennan for being one of the only voices who spoke solely for the victim.
	I also give voice to those on our Benches who strongly advocated the right to balance the liberties of the majority against the proper liberties of the individual; it is an important balance, but balance it is. My noble friend put this whole issue in the context of our international position, because the international situation has changed dramatically. The nature of the co-operation that we now have to undertake with others is significantly different from that which we have ever taken before because the threat has become international—it is not a home-grown threat which can be contained within these shores.
	Past approaches have to be reviewed and the procedural difficulties that are now presented to us are indeed real. I therefore endorse what my noble friend Lady Symons called the "realities". It was because of those realities that the detention of up to 90 days was considered a necessity.
	The comments of my noble friend were endorsed by a large number of speakers on our Benches: notably, and not least, by my noble friend Lady Ramsay with her huge experience of this issue, my noble friend Lady Henig, my noble and learned friend Lord Morris of Aberavon, and my noble friends Lord Foulkes, Lord Harris, Lord Griffiths, Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate and Lord Stratford, just to name a few.
	On the Liberal Democrat Benches, there was a very powerful endorsement in the form of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. He is our—this House's—independent voice. We rely on him for not only sagacity but care, in the way in which he reviews it. He has not failed us to date. Therefore, it is right that the Government, in coming to their view, took his independent view into consideration.
	In Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, we find support in the knowledge and concern of the noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew. In as far as fault can be found with the logic that has been advanced, or the questions that have been raised about the logic, I respectfully suggest that that has not been well founded.
	The noble Lords, Lord Kingsland and Lord McNally, said that the police could do all of this just with extra resources. That was put to DAC Peter Clarke, the head of the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch, by the Joint Committee on Human Rights on 24 October. When asked, "Wouldn't resources be the solution?", his answer was clear: "No, it would not". He went on to say:
	"However many resources we had I do not think it would cut into the basic problem here, which is the sheer weight of material which we are routinely recovering in these cases. This has to be analysed at some point and then focused into an interview strategy and an investigation strategy set by the senior investigation officer. At some point one person has to be aware of what is emerging from all this data. It cannot just be a cavalry charge".
	A number of noble Lords highlighted the difficulty of what my noble friend Lady Hayman called "squaring the circle", between the need to act swiftly and early and the complexity of deciphering the information necessary to pursue these issues so as to do justice and prevent acts of terror. I was particularly interested in my noble friend's contribution and the interesting comments she made in her well structured speech about the use to which we should put Clause 5. It would be right to give credit to my noble friend and to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, and the Newton committee. They, in their various guises, have promoted the creation of such an offence in Clause 5 for some considerable period. I say to them and to my noble friends Lord Soley and Lady Kennedy of The Shaws that the Government have not closed their mind to these possibilities.
	My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has made it clear that we are happy to look at the merits of allowing post-charge interviews in a wider range of circumstances. However, this cannot be a substitute for a longer pre-charge detention period. Post-charge interviews can be of use only if it has been possible to charge and hold the person in custody. So I think it is unlikely that we will be able to reach a resolution of that wider issue in this Bill.
	My noble friend Lord Soley was particularly right to remind us that this is not internment and that we have come a long way since then. I was very reassured by the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that, having undertaken a comparative study of other jurisdictions, the protection given to our citizens through the legislation and that which we propose in this legislation is sound.
	The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, exhorted us not to apply tunnel vision when we consider the acts of incitement and glorification. I assure him and other noble Lords who fear that that might be the case that we have not done so. A number of noble Lords raised that issue and we are, I assure the noble Lord, Lord Henley, approaching this with an appropriate element of openness. However, one cannot have it both ways. In relation to the issues that we shall come to shortly such as the role of academics and libraries, we have made it clear in all the speeches in the other place that the Bill would not adversely affect them. It is right that the specificity of those issues was not raised in the other place. They are now being raised, and we will look at them. As so many have said, including the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, my noble friend Lord Eatwell, the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp and my noble friend on the Back Bench—I hesitated there because first names come immediately to mind and that is more difficult—they know that this is not an intended consequence of the legislation.
	Noble Lords seek reassurance that we will do that which enables people to continue properly with their duties. My noble friends Lord Judd, Lord Ahmed and Lord Desai together with the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, have raised issues in relation to how communities will be affected. I assure all those noble Lords—particularly my noble friend Lord Parekh—that the Government would never want to clip the wings of such an attractive and lucid sting fly, who makes us think and whom we have found so essential in our philosophical debates, particularly those which have taken place in this House. We understand the contribution that our philosophers and our academics play.
	We have listened very carefully to the debate advanced on behalf of the libraries and universities. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary was pleased to discuss these issues with my noble friend Lord Eatwell, who I am sure raised all the issues about libraries and academics that any noble Lords would want to raise. If he did it with the passion with which he spoke tonight, I am relatively confident about that.
	It is not our intention to disable or to stifle proper debate in relation to that issue. My noble friend did have the advantage—I should clarify our current position. There is nothing in this Bill which would be a threat to innocent librarians performing activities in the vast majority of libraries in the United Kingdom. Clause 2 criminalises those who disseminate publications of two types: first, a publication that directly or indirectly encourages terrorism; and secondly a publication that is useful in the commission or preparation of terrorism, and could have been prepared only for that purpose.
	We have looked at the issues in relation to defences. We will look again at the defence in Clause 2(8), which a number of noble Lords say has given them problems. We will look at "endorsement" in Clause 2(8)(c), together with "examined" in Clause 2(8)(a). We will, if we can come to any resolution of those matters, come back to your Lordships before or no later than in Committee.
	Perhaps I may say a few words about the academic position. This issue was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, my noble friend Lord Parekh, the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and my noble friend Lady Warwick. Those comments have also been added to by a further letter that I received while on the Front Bench from the Royal Society of Chemistry. I say to it, and to all those who have spoken, that we will seek to address those issues more fully when this matter comes back.
	There are certain issues I hope to deal with very rapidly. My noble friend Lord Ahmed asked me some questions about Kashmir. Perhaps I may reassure him that supporting or sympathising with a group—even one engaged in violence—is not criminalised by this Bill. Glorification of terrorism is caught by the Bill only if it is likely to incite others in acts of terrorism.
	My noble friend also dealt with issues in relation to the Terrorism Act. I have answers for all of these further issues. The time is now five minutes past ten and I would therefore invite your Lordships' indulgence and say that I will respond—save that I would like to make a specific response to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, because her issues were raised both by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, and by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch.
	Noble Lords, I hope, will understand why I cannot discuss specifically the individual cases or security issues, not least because some are still sub judice. However, I will study the noble Baroness's remarks very carefully, and if I can tell her anything beyond the information already given to her by Ministers, of course I will seek to do so and copy any letters to noble Lords who have commented.
	I would have liked to give a better answer, which I have, to the noble Lord, Lord Plant of Highland, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, and the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, on Clause 3 and allowing the blocking of websites. I have copious answers for all those. I invite noble Lords to allow me to give those on paper.
	This foreshadows an excellent Committee debate. I hope that we will continue to engage in this debate in a constructive way that will help us better to protect the people of our country, for whom we all care.
	On Question, Bill read a second time.